


Hair of the Dog

by Rulerofthefakeempire



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Angst, Historically Inaccurate, How do you become a person?, Hurt/Comfort, Learned Domesticity, M/M, Self Indulgent Bullshit Honestly, slowly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25125442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rulerofthefakeempire/pseuds/Rulerofthefakeempire
Summary: The man extended his hand down to him from the veranda.“Name’s McCree, Jesse McCree.”Hanzo couldn’t help but smile, and took his hand, reaching up, his skin warm, his grip firm.“Shimada Hanzo,” he answered, voice low, “at your service.”The man, McCree, laughed.“Well then,” he drawled, “no sense in hanging around, you best come on in.”
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 83
Kudos: 130





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So when I was a kid, my dad and I would watch what he called "rainy day westerns," which was pretty self explanatory and I loved them, I loved the white hats and the black hats and Clint Eastwood and the music and the endless plains and hills and whatever they had to offer. Then, at the end of 2019 I was in a job that I hated and I was miserable and in an effort to alleviate this, my dad went back to the strategies that had worked when I was seven and we started watching westerns again. It didn't work like it had, but I still enjoyed sitting on the couch with him, thinking less of how much I fucking hated my boss.
> 
> I give you this information because its important that you, the reader, understand that this story is based off westerns, the movie genre, especially those from the 50s and 60s, and not on literally any sort of accurate research, of which I did fuck all. This is teeming with inaccuracies I'm sure, but I'd appreciate it if you would think only of the westerns you too must have seen and not any history books you might own. 
> 
> Thanks.

_Opines that the palm tree chose to grow_

_Toward the heavens when there was no farther West it could go._

The man was standing by the saloon doors when he first saw him, sweeping the dust from the front porch as the mid morning unraveled around him. 

Hanzo watched from across the street as he considered the manner of his approach, seeking somewhere comfortable to roost, some safe haven for a just few nights until he was forced onwards. There was nowhere sufficiently remote for him, nowhere sufficiently isolated and silent, where news might never reach; he sought a town like an island, an impenetrable archipelago. And he could tell already that there was gossip thick in this air. 

But it would do for now, a resting place. 

The town wasn’t big enough for more than two hotels, but the one he'd looked to first hadn’t been worth his time, girls draped across the balcony, waving their handkerchiefs as though they could smell the money on his clothes. The trade itself did not bother him, a fairly commonplace scheme in this part of the world, but the owner had looked at him with sweaty-eyed anticipation, his beard poorly kept, his hair greasy, his saloon dirty and unhygienic. Looking at Hanzo like a hungry man looks at the candy in a small child’s distrustful grip. 

He’d slipped on, nose turned up, not wanting to think of bedsheets if the curtains were that unbecoming. 

The second saloon seemed more promising, even if it was just that the man on the porch appeared to be cleaning, dressed in a clean shirt, a clean waistcoat, a single ring of gold hanging from his ear. Standards were low and he met all of them, the curtains clean at their windows, withdrawn to let the light in, an apron tied tightly around the his waist and his hair tied back. Around them, people bustled with the mid morning action of a small town in motion, one half populated by travellers and the other by those that made profit on serving them. 

After a moment, he pulled himself from the other side of the street, taking his time weaving between the women in hoop skirts, the men in smoking jackets and bolo ties, horses and their riders, carriages, keeping his eyes on the man, ears pricking at the sound of the tune he was whistling. He took his hat from his head as he entered the shade of the balcony from above, planting himself at the foot of the steps, no railing to seperate them, just him on the dusty road, the man on his veranda.

And for the first time, the man looked to him, blinking into focus, looking down on him, and Hanzo couldn’t help but like the look of him, but like the colour of his eyes, his jaw, his body tall and strong. He had such a particular squint, taking him in, as if trying to assess whether he was a robber or a customer, an opportunity or a problem, and Hanzo knew in an instant that he was going enjoy making this man wonder. He didn’t smile, but held his hat to his heart, his shoulders straight, his jaw raised, holding himself as if he was a gentleman rather than a criminal, as though he was capable of some vague nobility, something trustworthy. 

“Good morning,” he found himself saying, his voice just as cold as he’d planned, “are you the owner of this establishment?” 

The man blinked at him, his expression blank for a moment, before it broke out into a smile, looking down at him with something glimmering in his eyes. A customer, he’d clearly concluded, leaning his elbow down on his broom. 

“That I am,” his voice was a smooth as honey, dripping off his tongue. There were sun-worn crevasses around his eyes, come early for his age, his shoulders broad, body lean with the muscle of a working man, his waist trim and his legs long, an almost handsome face to him. Almost. “Is there something I could be helping you with?” 

Hanzo gazed at him. There was something strange about him, something about the way he held his hips, something in his unwavering eyes, the steadiness of his hands, patiently waiting for any answer, unruffled. The owner of the first saloon had been nothing but frenzied, pulling at his sleeve, getting his girls to call down to him, as though a pretty face would make him forget the smell of his breath, the stain on his collar, the grime of his teeth. 

But this man showed no need of his patronage, no desperation, something gentle in his attention. 

“I wish to board here,” he kept his voice steady, his eyes level, responding to the man’s calm with his own, the anxiety of not knowing where he planned to sleep shifting out of him, “do you have rooms available?” 

“A few,” he smiled, standing straighter “why don’t you come on in? We’ll fix you some luncheon and see what we’ve got.” The idea was appealing, the concept of a warm meal, perhaps something to drink too tempting to resist, not from a man like this, looking at him like that. Every word that came out of him mouth seemed to affirm Hanzo’s instinctive trust in his services, in the roof he might put over his head, doing all the right things. The man extended his hand down to him from the veranda. “Name’s McCree, Jesse McCree.” 

Hanzo couldn’t help but smile, and took his hand, reaching up, his skin warm, his grip firm. 

“Shimada Hanzo,” he answered, voice low, “at your service.” 

The man, McCree, laughed. 

“Well then,” he drawled, “no sense in hanging around, you best come on in.” 

He was welcomed inside with a smile, with hardly a bat of McCree’s eyelashes, not a readjustment of his shoulders, as though he disturbed none of these waters, left no marks.

The inside of the bar was bathed in soft light, quiet and dim, a few windows open to let the warm breeze in, chairs still stacked upside down on the tables to sweep beneath, no other patrons besides himself, just the quiet inside of a saloon not yet fully recovered from the night before. He got the feeling he had been invited into a private space, like seeing the backstage of a theatre, still restoring itself for the coming evening show. 

McCree left his broom by the door as he led him through the tables and chairs to the bar, where a pretty young woman was cleaning gin glasses with a rag, humming softly to herself as she placed them gently back into their cases, one by one. Her dark hair was piled high on the top of her head, her features so clear he wouldn’t have put her a day over twenty, a western tie over her lace blouse, her white collar rising up her slender neck. She had the look of a child in an adults clothes, playing barkeep.

McCree called out to her. 

“Hana, darlin’, would you mind fixing Mr Shimada here a drink.”

Her eyes shot up and landed on him in an instant. He got the feeling she could have been hostile if she wanted to be, but there must have been something in McCree’s voice must have conveyed to her that he was a customer rather than a swindler, something generous in his posture, because she smiled, the wariness gone from her eyes in a flash, replaced by something clear and eager. 

“Of course, what would you like?” She was looking at him with a kind of easy confidence, as if he could make no request that she would make her think twice, as if she could see in his eyes that his tastes were refined but not outlandish, that everything a man like him could want was already behind her bar.

“I recommend the whiskey, good for lunch,” McCree clapped him on the back as he spoke, slipping behind the bar with the young woman. 

And two months ago the sudden touch of a man he didn’t know would have ended with his nails in the skin of his wrist, McCree’s nose broken. But these weeks on the road had stiffened him, kept him from wrapping his hand around McCree’s throat, slamming him down onto the bar and pressing down until he stopped struggling and his eyes went glassy, had taught him that Americans touched each other. Constantly. He couldn’t keep himself from the flinch, but he could smother it, he could force his shoulders back down and swallow his own breath, maintaining composure as he gazed at the girl, certain that nothing good could come of making himself memorable in panic. 

“A whiskey then,” he breathed, “if you please, miss.” He took a seat at the bar with his heart still beating fast, hair still on end as as the young woman went about getting him a drink and McCree set a small notebook down on the bar in front of him, leafing through it, rubbing at his beard. Hanzo watched him, interest already starting to nibble at him, having long learned that there was little to fear in a small town innkeeper, regardless of the width of their shoulders or quickness of their eyes. 

McCree looked up at him, popping a pencil behind his ear as he did, Hana setting an inch of whiskey down in front of him. 

“Now, Mr Shimada, how long were you planning on staying?” 

Hanzo swirled the amber liquid around in his glass as considered his answer, considering his own plans, how much farther west he could go. He shrugged, gazing up at him. 

“A few days,” he took a sip of the whiskey, enjoying the burn as he swallowed, knowing not to show the shiver, “depending.” 

“Of course,” McCree smiled at him before he looked back down at his notebook, turning the pages back and forth, “Hana,” the girl looked up at the sound of his voice, having returned to her glasses, “when are the Gibsons moving on?” 

“Tuesday, I think,” she mused, “they only paid til Tuesday, that’s for certain.” 

“Well, then,” McCree turned back to him, “I can offer you a balcony room if that’ll do, but I only got the one with the bath, and that’ll cost extra.” 

Hanzo smiled at him, and thought, _yes. Yes, this will do just fine._

“I would not have it any other way,” he said, hoping that McCree would understand that money was no object to him, that he would pay much any price for a few days rest somewhere comfortable. 

“Perfect,” McCree beamed at him, “I’ll have the boy go for your bags.” 

…

He fell backwards onto the bed, full and heavy and achingly tired. 

He’d been seated by a window with the sun on his back and the morning’s newspaper in his hand, fed a steak and pepper pie, with bread rolls and boiled potatoes to soak up the gravy, more whiskey, as though he was to be put to sleep through contentment alone. McCree had waited on him, setting the food down in front of him as soon as it was ready, refilling his water glass between the placing of the chairs back on the floor and the wiping down of tables, going about the chores of the morning while he ate. 

He’d eaten slow enough to watch a few other patrons arrive, some descending the stairs, guests he supposed, and others who ambled in off the street, taking their seats, some at tables, some at the bar, Hana and McCree flittering between them, accomplices, calmly taking orders, pouring drinks. The play had been set in motion by midday, the lights dimmed and the spaces cleared for the audience to take shelter from the sun, where the shadows held on to the cool afternoon sweetness. He’d watched from the corner like an anthropologist, studying the common folk. 

The room he’d been given was plain, small, but it was neat and airy, the sheets so blissfully clean, so soft and so cool, the window left open, tidy and full of fresh air. McCree had lead him up the stairs when he’d finished with his meal, leaving Hana to tend to the bar, carrying his bags, neither of them hurried. McCree had unlocked the third door on the left for him, swung it open so that he could sidle inside, slipping past him just close enough to smell the liquor on his clothes. McCree had made no move to enter, just placed his bags by the door and pressed the key into his palm, smiling at him. 

“This room will do you alright?” He’d asked, Hanzo certain that if he’d said that it wouldn’t, he’d be offered another with hardly a bat of his eyelashes.

“I think as much,” he’d answered, smoothing down the quilt that covered the bed with his hand, peering out the window down onto the street, “this will do nicely, thank you, Mr McCree.” 

McCree had smiled at him from the door. 

“It ain’t nothing, Mr Shimada. Now you just holler if you should need anything.” 

McCree had left him to return to the luncheon crowd, to Hana, to attend to his establishment and Hanzo had let him, closing the door behind him, letting the sweet silence of the room fill his ears, the distinct absence of a train thundering along tracks, the delightful hush, only the quiet chatter of the saloon below, the town outside. It was blissful, and all he could do was slip backwards until he found himself on his back, barely managing to hold onto any of his refinement as his sore muscles met with the bedding. 

It took him ten minutes to work up the energy required to remove his shoes, longer still to crawl towards his bags, to rediscover his belongings, all packed away. He wasn’t designed for such long periods in transit, he wasn’t meant for the roaming, the trudging from small town to small town seeking salvation or isolation, whichever came first. It was exhausting and he was exhausted by it. 

It had been so easy for Genji, always so easy, wafting, rarely ever home, dressing like an urchin as soon as the opportunity arose, happy sleeping in a thousand unfamiliar beds, disappearing into a stranger’s life and living there for months before he scampered on. And at the time, Hanzo had cursed him, now he wished for nothing but that same capacity for movement. 

But for lack of it, all he really wanted was a new suit. All he longed for was the wardrobe he’d left behind, his handcrafted leather shoes, his silk shirts and tailored trousers. He missed his desk, sheets he knew to be clean because he employed the people who cleaned them, he missed his books, his antique china, his mother’s jewellery, all of it having to be left behind, all of it probably already burned. He missed a room that was his for longer than a week, furniture he’d chosen, missed his own markings on a place, longing for permanence, class, where there was only temporary sanctuary, and not even a sanctuary that belonged to him. 

He missed Genji. 

He slept until dinner.

...

By the time he descended for his evening meal, the saloon had shifted, bloomed, more cast members, the audience larger, the play in full swing. Where the young woman, Hana, had tended to the bar, she had since taken position at a poker table, dressed in a dealer’s black and whites, a gaggle of men frowning down at their cards in front of her. She smiled at him as he passed, and he nodded in return, knowing that to pause there would only result in playing a game he was destined to loose. 

He instead made his way through the other patrons. There were not so many that he’d feel suffocated, but just enough that he could feel anonymous slipping between them, halfway to unseen in the soft thrum of a Friday evening in a small town saloon. 

He was guided towards the bar by the sound of McCree laughing, welcomed by the sight of his grin as he pulled beers for the misshapen travellers that haunted the stools like cobwebs in ceiling corners. McCree was talking to a blond man hunched in front of him who seemed to be laying down his woes for McCree to laugh at, though from his expression, he didn’t seem to find them nearly as funny. McCree shot him a smile as Hana had done when he took a seat a few stools down from the blond man and his despair. 

He’d come early, before dinner would be served in the parlour, certain that he would feel hungry in time, but for now all he wanted was something to drink. 

Every time he stepped off the train, every time he extended his stay in transit, it seemed impossible to him that he should go on, that he had not yet been tracked down, gagged, and thrown in the back of a carriage, that fate was letting him get so far before his luck ran out. It made anxiety swirl in his belly, made his teeth grind in his mouth, and his legs itch for movement, itching for a train, a horse, a boat, anything to keep going, keep pressing west until he got far enough away that he’d wager his life on never being found. But no matter how he longed for further retreat, he’d throw himself onto the tracks before he stepped foot back on a carriage without at least a few nights rest. 

And in the mean time, he’d drink. 

He watched McCree pause whatever conversation he was having with the blond man to approach him, smiling as though he was pleased to see him, rather than simply pleased to see his wallet. Hanzo almost found himself fooled, sinking into his gaze, comfortable in it, McCree looking at him as though the only motive behind his eyes was to meet his needs, offer his services. 

“You enjoy your afternoon, Mr Shimada?” 

“Quite,” Hanzo responded. He’d slept, trying to outrun his traveller’s fatigue, basking in the steadiness of the bed he’d been provided with, delighted by its lack of track-based shudders, trying to force himself to forget his anxiety, to focus only on the resting of his weary bones.

“I’m glad,” McCree dried his hands with a rag as he spoke, smiling at him, “now, what can I get you?” 

Hanzo gestured vaguely. 

“Whatever you have on tap will be fine.” 

“Whatever you like, Mr Shimada,” McCree answered, swinging the rag over his shoulder and producing a glass from seemingly nowhere, spinning it around in his hand with practised ease, as though he’d never broken anything in his life, setting it filled down in front of him like a well oiled machine. He was steady, nothing about him uncertain and Hanzo would have killed to feel that sort of security, to twirl glasses in his hands and trust his fingers not to let them fall. 

“You are very good at that,” he murmured as he pulled the glass close to him, his elbows down on the wooden bench. 

“Should be,” McCree agreed, whipping away some spilled drink with his rag, “only been doin’ it since I was ten.” Before Hanzo could ask McCree anything more he was called away, eyes rising as someone called his name from the other end of the bar. He turned back a moment before he left, “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, “just holler if you should need anything.” 

Hanzo watched him saunter away, head cocked to an inquisitive angle as the evening picked up around him, more drinkers, more guests, more money to be made, other afternoons to be better known than his. He let him go, knowing that if he had it his way, McCree’s attention would remain on him, never straying, that he would be doted on like he used to be doted on, back when he’d had power and influence and his father’s blessing to frighten the servants. 

For the time being, he stayed upright on his stool and studied the gleaming bottles of liquor behind the bar, standing in rows in front of a gold gilded mirror, catching the yellow light of the saloon. He gazed around. He’d been in so many saloons these past few months, so many hotels, so many beds, so many dinners at tables, drinks at bars, but none as warm, as comfortable as this, slow and jovial, all the chatter good natured.

Everything was worn in like a good pair of boots, the leather gone soft, accomodating, the man behind the counter somehow exactly where he ought to be and nothing like he should have been. Hanzo watched him as he moved, tending to the patrons, laughing with them, filling their glasses, trying to figure out what was so wrong with him, what about him was so different to all the other innkeepers he’d met. 

Hanzo watched him take a bottle off shelf as he spoke to someone, sipping the ale he’d been given, grateful for something to think about besides his own sense of doom. It seemed astonishing, implausible even, that a man with such a pleasant face and amicable demeanour had no ring on his finger, seemed without wife or want for one. 

Hanzo reasoned that perhaps he was a man of god or something. 

He’d never met a preacher who doubled as a barkeep, but he figured stranger things must have happened in the west. Perhaps there was a classical shortage of reputable women, perhaps McCree had made himself dishonourable in youth, perhaps he was a widower, it was impossible to say. But he quietly entertained himself theorising as he drank, as the bar filled around him, as he waited for dinner to be served. And before he knew it his glass was empty and McCree was back in front of him, a sort of sixth sense for finished drinks. 

“You like another, Mr Shimada?” His smile was kindly, sober, and sweet.

“Please,” he answered, pushing his glass towards him, “I have been meaning to ask to you something, Mr McCree.” McCree blinked at him as he took the glass, pulling another. 

“Sure, what’s on your mind, Mr Shimada?” 

“Do you know of a tailor here in town?” He watched McCree fill the glass, managing the froth to keep it light, “I am in need of a few things.” 

McCree set down his drink anew, “Well, there’s a mighty fine seamstress just down aways, good at making much anything for a price.” McCree smiled at him, “I’ll give you some directions in the morning if you’d like.” 

“I may well allow it, Mr McCree. Thank you,” Hanzo mused, something almost teasing in his tone, as if he was known for that sort of business.

“Well,” McCree drawled, “wouldn’t want you getting lost in this here one road town, would we?” McCree shot him a wink, grinning at him, and he smiled back despite himself. 

It had been a long time since he’d been on the receiving end of a smile like that, one that lit a campfire in his chest and kept him warm long after it left him. 

...

Dinner was a pleasant affair, served in the adjacent parlour, set down with plate of roast beef, heavy with rosemary and thyme, roasted carrots, potatoes, green beans, a basket of bread at the centre of his table to soak up the gravy. He lost himself in it, letting the warm comfort of food well-cooked and well-loved fill him, letting it stir the bear in him, already mapping the route he would take back to his room, to sleep off this weight. 

Around him, other guests dined, some lone diners like himself, keeping to themselves, some in small groups, family bonds between them, and all of them travellers, heading west for the coast, pressing through the deserts like migrating birds, risking the trip for fairer western weather. He admired them, knowing that where he sought isolation they sought prosperity, their greed well intentioned and hopeful, more than he could say for his own. He could see the gold in their eyes, delight steady and bright in their tired bodies, battered by travel, spurned onwards by the promise of precious stones and hot summers, laughing together at their tables.

After dinner, he sank into a booth down the far end of the saloon, having entertained a dessert of cake and black coffee, armed with a bottle of whiskey and a map of the train lines, the old tracks and roads that sprawled west over the desert, through the mountains, stretching like fingers feeling over the landscape for water and gold. He spread the papers out over the table, to trace the routes he was yet to take, the next town he might visit, from railcar to stagecoach to horse and back again, stretching out over the plains. 

He couldn’t bare more than a week in transit before he began to seek the steadiness of a bed and a warm meal like a swimmer collapsing back on land, but he’d long accepted that he had places to be, that he didn’t have the audacity to linger, to risk being found. He could savour the sweet embrace of a small town for only a few days before he started to look over his shoulder, his heart seizing at any footfall he couldn’t identify within a second of hearing it. It suited him to spend a few hours figuring out how quickly he’d be able to get out of town if he had to, where he’d go, what he’d pack and what he’d leave behind. If it came to that. 

“You little harlot.”

The hiss caught him off guard, head yanked up from where he’d been nose deep in a map, eyes flickering away from his table of papers, his bottle of whiskey, to the saloon still unraveling around him as the evening progressed. 

There was a harsh thud like a gavel hitting a bench. 

His eyes searched for the sound, scanning across the tavern, from McCree at the bar, serenely mixing drinks, to the other patrons, milling around, to the poker table where Hana still sat at the head, dressed in her black and whites with narrow eyes and a man looming over her. Hanzo watched him, standing rigid and brutish like a volcano paused mid eruption, his fist down on the table beside his cards, his chair pushed back, teeth bared.

“This is a goddamn con, I’m telling you!” 

A cold hatred shivered through him as he watched, eyebrows furrowing, eyes narrowing, Hana holding her ground as the man all but spat the words in her face, refusing to budge an inch. Hanzo watched her refold her hands on the table, looking up at the man as though he was making a fool of himself, as if that was all a large man could do to a small girl in this day and age, make a fool of himself. 

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you,” she said with a snarl, “you lost.” Hard words coming from a five and a half foot waif, hard words said to a man damn near double her size and drunk on his own aggression. Hanzo watched the way the man’s lip curled back, his nose crinkled, violence blossoming in his eyes, watched his hand rise in slow motion, his palm raised high above his shoulder, the other poker players frozen in anticipation, expressions taunt, fear flashing across Hana’s features.

And Hanzo couldn’t recall the steps he must have taken to get from his booth to the poker table, hadn’t realised that he’d been moving at all until he felt his fingers wrap around the man’s wrist, felt the fragile bones creak, suddenly jerking him backwards, making him stumble as the man’s eyes shot back towards him, a righteous anger thrashing through him. 

“What in tarnation-”

Hanzo cut him off, his grip tightening around the delicate joint. 

“Now,” his voice came out a hiss, low and venomous, not a voice he’d had to use in months, “you were not meaning to strike this young lady,” the man began to writhe as his fist began to clench, began to find brittle bone, “were you?” 

“No,” the man gasped, “no.” He seemed to be melting, twisting, mouth agape as Hanzo grew dangerously close to breaking his wrist and sending him tumbling to the floor. He could hear Hana in the background begging him to stop, wailing about hurting him as if he didn’t deserve to be hurt, as if he hadn’t already forfeited the right for his bones to go unbroken. Hanzo could only snarl down at him, eyes locked on the man’s face, his shoulders shivering in pain, agony written all over his features. 

He would have kept going until the crack of bone filled the air, until the man screamed, until the joint was so twisted out of place Hanzo could release it knowing that he’d never use it again, had McCree’s hand not landed on his shoulder when it did and he flinched, hard, the table plunged into silence. 

McCree was standing next to him as though he’d been summoned from nowhere, so calm, so serene, as though Hanzo wasn’t midway through making one of his customers unfit for work, smiling down at the other poker players. His hand stayed steady on Hanzo’s shoulder as he leant down to refill their glasses from a pitcher, rag slung over his shoulder, Hanzo blinking at him, paused in his efforts to render the man handless. He watched as McCree circled the table, hand slipping from his person as quickly as it had come, making his way to Hana, her eyes locked on him like he’d descended from the heavens just for her, gaze filled with sweet relief.

“You ready for your supper, Hana?” He asked her, standing by her chair as she nodded, sighing as if exhaling the tension she’d felt. He smiled down at her. “Why don’t you take it on the porch, darlin’? There ain’t no one out there, you can catch your breath.” 

“That would be nice.” 

Hanzo was frozen, staring at them, talking as though he wasn’t midway through breaking a limb, the man still attempting to wriggle out of his grasp as if Hanzo didn’t have a set of muscles specifically built for trapping things in his grip and refusing to let them go. He watched as Hana stood, brushing off her skirt, the frightened flush vanishing from her cheeks as McCree pulled out her seat for her. 

“Off you go, darlin’,” Jesse beamed down at her and she beamed back, letting him sling his rag over her shoulder as if something symbolic, turning back towards the table, to the the scene still only half completed before her, cut short before it’s rightful crescendo. 

“Back in ten, folks,” she said, voice light and certain, as though poker was still on anyone’s mind. 

As she strode away, McCree finally looked at him, hand on the back of the chair Hana had vacated, Hanzo’s grip still tight and painful around the man’s wrist, frowning at him. 

“Best you let the fella go, Mr Shimada,” he said, Hanzo blinking at him, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Let him go? Let him _go?_ This man had been about to strike Miss Hana, and McCree was acting as though nothing had happened, as though this was not a crime needing justice, as though it was him acting out of turn, being barbaric. 

“But-”

McCree smiled at him. 

“There ain’t nothing for you to worry about, Mr Shimada,” he purred, eyes steady and clear, empty of dishonesty, not an ounce of malice in him. 

Hanzo opened his mouth to say more, to protest, to demand that he be given permission to break this man’s hand clean off, the audacity. But the words wouldn’t come, not from under McCree’s soft gaze, smoothing him down even with the desire for violence still red hot in him. And after a moment, he found his grip loosening, his fingernails lifting from the groves they’d left in the man’s flesh, the bruised skin and bone, releasing him just like McCree had asked him to.

The man snapped out of his grip as soon as it was loose enough, shrinking away from him, gasping and hugging the joint to his chest, a look like murder in his beady, little eyes. Hanzo snarled back. 

“Bastard almost broke my wrist,” the man shuddered, mouth gaping, hissing like an enraged rattlesnake as Hanzo bore his teeth at him. 

“Do not think I would not have done,” he snapped in return, the man growling back as though Hanzo couldn’t see the shine of fear in his eyes, half masked by bitterness and rage, as if he wasn’t cowering, all bent forwards as though he was trying to push through a stiff wind.

“No need for that,” McCree chimed in, voice pleasant, light, coming to stand beside him, to face his belittled customer, the customer that had been a half second from striking his card dealer just a few moments before, still tender and wounded like a kicked dog. Hanzo watched in disgust, but McCree smiled at the man, hand on his hip. “Why don’t you go get yourself a drink, Jensen, you’ll be right as rain.”

The man stared at him, something like astonished bitterness in his eyes, lip curled back, hunched over his arm.

“You ain’t gonna defend me, McCree?” He hissed, “I known you since you were knee height, y’know.” 

McCree didn’t even blink, just smiled on, serene, barely a flicker of anger to him, even as Hanzo all but vibrated with hatred beside him, a shivering lust for destruction thrumming through him. 

“Wasn’t gonna, no.” 

The man processed his answer with a snarl, the words unraveling inside his pig-sized brain, nostrils flaring as he realised that McCree meant what he said, a moment of silence shared between the three of them. Hanzo watched, hoping so badly that the man chose to make some threat, to attempt some revenge on them, that he’d be given the opportunity to slam his face down on the table and watch his blood run down his face, broken nose, fractured collarbone. But in the end, all he did was sneer, his thin lips curling back against yellow teeth.

“Fine,” he hissed, “I’ll take my patronage somewhere else then.” 

McCree’s smile didn’t falter. 

“You do that.” 

He and McCree watched in silence as he stomped away, violent and bitter, kicking at the floor, still clutching his arm like it was an infant, making for the door, but as his hand reached out to push it open Hanzo suddenly felt his stomach drop. 

The realisation hit him like a hammer against a nail, like he’d turned his back on his opponent, let his guard down, his expression seizing as he realised that Hana was still out there, still catching her breath before her supper like McCree had told her to. He could just see her silhouette through the slatted windows, standing out there on the porch in her black and whites. The man’s expression flashed before his eyes, that look of resentment and anger, that taste for revenge still on his tongue, probably still thinking that it was her who had done this to him, stripped him of his dignity and painless evening to come. 

He started forward as the man slipped out the door, out onto the porch where she stood, alone and exposed.

“Let him go, Mr Shimada.” McCree spoke at his first movement and the words seemed impossible, incomprehensible, Hanzo’s eyes whipping back to him, teeth ground with worry, Hanzo unable to understand how his behaviour had become so dishonourable, seeming content to let something awful happen to a young woman under his care, content to let that man become the savage he clearly wanted to be at Miss Hana’s expense. Horror clawed through him, sickness in his stomach, his desire for violence dwarfed by his confusion, by McCree’s seeming indifference.

“But Miss Hana-”

“Just give her a moment,” McCree purred, eyes on the window. And despite himself, he took pause, eyes turning back towards the porch, watching her silhouette move as the man approached her, watching him reach out to touch her, watching her fist connecting hard and fast with his nose, the movement short and powerful, something below the waist causing him to keel over, trying to protect something delicate and probably small. 

He disappeared below the window.

He felt McCree arrive beside him as he gaped and gawked, pleasant and sweet, gently returned to his honour like a bird returning to a nest, back being good like a man with his face should have been, steady and certain. 

“Mr McCree,” he heard himself mutter, “You set him up.” 

Beside him, he heard McCree chuckle. 

“He set himself up, I gave him a choice.” 

Hana slipped back inside a moment later, unwrapping McCree’s rag from around her knuckles, glowing, unharmed, beaming at them as she made her way over, Hanzo’s eyes wide, heart still hammering in his chest, astonished. Both of them watched as Hana weaved through the tables towards them, looking just as harmless as she had when she’d left, small and unfazed by the man who was presumably still curled up on the porch, protecting his privates. 

“All done,” she sang, giving McCree’s rag back to him, only slightly more bloodied than it had been before.

McCree smiled down at her. 

“Thats a good girl,” he said, shoving the rag into his pocket, “go get yourself something to eat, you earned it.” Hanzo gazed up at him as he spoke, at his gentle smile, his soft-hearted demeanour, at the trust in his eyes as he smiled at her, trusting that there was nothing she couldn’t do to a man taking too many liberties, that she would be fine. Admiration flooded through him, knowing that he’d never been capable of it himself, that trust. 

As she sauntered away, McCree turned to him, his eyes clear and earnest, arms crossed over his chest, something honest and beautiful in him, relaxed as though they were compatriots, accomplices in the same scheme, both of them sitting pretty with the same sense of satisfied success, as though Hanzo wasn’t still utterly baffled.

“I appreciate you not roughing up that fella,” McCree ran his hand through his hair as he spoke, “I also appreciate you wanting to rough him up,” McCree smiled so easy, so certain, looking down at him as though he could believe nothing else, “it says something good about a fella when he’ll go putting his nose in business that ain’t his just cause it's the right thing to do.” 

And for a moment, something warm filled his chest, something he hadn’t felt in so long, that campfire feeling.

“A pleasure,” was all he could think to say. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I won’t have you cursing peaches, Mr Shimada, not under my roof. Anything they’re in is a gift to this earth,” McCree turned the newspaper over in his hands, squinting at the words, “Well would you look at that, the Bonney's have called the baby Alene. It only took ‘em three weeks to come to a verdict.” 
> 
> “What were they calling the baby before?” 
> 
> “Pumpkin.” 
> 
> Together they sipped coffee and contemplated this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the key times in history when Western movies really popped off was the fifties and it was for a pretty good reason. 
> 
> The fifties was the era of the cold war, of the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, atomic drills in schools, and constant coiling terror, so its kind of understandable the refuge that the wild west offered. Most people didn't, and still don't, understand the technology that was at play, couldn't say exactly why those bombs would cause that dreaded devastation, just that they would. In westerns, all the technology was antiquated, analog and easy to understand, and it was easier to talk about the tension of the cold war from within a context that was fundamentally low stakes by comparison. 
> 
> So when you watch a western from the 1950s with that in mind, its pretty easy to pick out the cold war analogies. The good guys and the bad guys, small towns under siege from mysterious foes, all of those Mexican standoffs, you could almost call it mutually assured annihilation. It was a good way of dealing with that sense of anxiety, as well as a way of communicating to the American people that to one man's nobility there would always be another to threaten it, and a good quality Hero will occasionally have to execute some extraordinary violence to deal with it. So some of it was just white bread propaganda, but it also demonstrated a general public genuinely trying to figure out how to be a person in a world chock fucking full of nuclear weapons and not just be incredibly frightened all the time.
> 
> This has been todays history lesson. 
> 
> For more film facts, google them.

_You will rise with the morning_

_And shake off the teeth,_

_Squeeze the rind, spit the pith, and drink the day in._

The filtered light came soft through his window, getting later and later to rise each day as the summer began to slip away into fall, as the trees began to loose their leaves and the rains got wetter, the winds colder. From bed, he watched the shadows drifting across his ceiling, tangled in soft linens that smelt of laundry and his own cologne, a small vase of lavender half-dried on the side-table, warmth starting to seep in from the outside, a soft breeze flowing through the room from the window he’d kept open.

Around him, other occupants of the inn were beginning to shift; other guests, Hana and McCree, wherever they slept, the drunkards that had been turfed out onto the porch the night before, forced awake by the soft departure of the night and the swift reclamation of the day, the cycle beginning anew. He listened to someone in an adjacent room rising from bed, a kettle somewhere whistling, a door creaking open, imagining it all as though he wasn’t a participant, none of his business, as though he was listening from afar rather than from within.

Some mornings, it seemed impossible to him that the places he slept could be so occupied by strangers, neither servants nor family members, that this hotel was not his home, that he was not powerful here, the centre of attention here. It was so much easier in the broad sun of the day, making purchases, making choices; easier in the evenings at bars, served as though he was still at least partially himself, easier when he was too busy to think of it, too busy to feel the sense of displacement heavy in every limb, a bit lost, a bit out of touch, out of focus.

But here, in a room that could have been his own with only a slight adjustment of decor, a steady pain wound though his chest, a homesickness like a tree’s roots woven though his ribcage, unable to be removed, growing only weightier, more twisted, the further west he ventured. Some days all he could think of was that he might as well flock home now, before the distance grew too great, the damage done too irreversible.

He rubbed a hand over his face, pressing the heel of his palm into each eye socket, breathing only deep breaths.

When he’d been young and ruthless, he’d been able to drink more than his brother and mother combined, but now it took no more than a half bottle of whiskey to leave him weary and deluded, depressed by the time the next morning came. It left him aching, left him breaking, homesick and sore, regretting every decision he’d ever made. Most mornings, he felt like a tumbleweed with standards too high, missing the times when the roots growing diseased and twisted in his chest had dug deep into the earth, more like foundations than curses, growing, unraveling, secure and solid and immovable, growing the way Shimada’s were meant to grow. In forests.

At some point, he dragged himself out of bed, knowing that he could comb his hair and find something nice to wear and it might make him feel stronger, less battered, as if he could recreate the person he’d been, the status he’d held in a windswept small town so ill-equipped to live up to his old standards.

But despite the futility, he did his hair. He put on one of his good waistcoats, the cufflinks he’d gone out of his way to purchase, his nice black shoes, his grandfather’s watch, and he refused to let his standards slip. He might be a traveller now, but he would be a well dressed one, clean and tidy, with combed hair and cologne dabbed onto each collarbone and each wrist, setting out his shirts to have them laundered and pressed, his shoes shined, chasing any semblance of normalcy, any quality he could maintain.

When he’d set out, he’d expected the urges to dissipate, he’d expected to adapt, for these months on train and track to have worn him down, weathered and eroded until his grip on his old truths went loose and they slipped away. He’d expected to become someone new, someone different, someone who was better at this constant, shuddering movement.

But, if anything, he’d gotten worse.

His desire for old, Shimada comforts only grew, got only stronger the further west he ventured. The more foreign his surrounds became the hungrier he felt for the familiar, so distant from his old hunting grounds, the reliable bittersweetness of his own home. Here, the people, their faces battered by sun-heavy deserts, with golden shoulders and freckled cheeks, they looked at him as though he was an animal wandered too far from home to survive, as though they couldn’t understand what a man like him could be looking for all the way out here.

They looked at him as though they were descended from the coyotes themselves, from the shrubs he’d seen clinging to the dust between the rainstorms, unconcerned with gold, with luxury, with satin and velvet, unable to understand how a man with riches could care so little for horses and tablecloths. He could see nothing of himself in them and vice versa, descended only from his own ancestors and their desire for wealth accumulated.

As he watched his own eyes move in the mirror, he could see only his own heritage looking back, a thousand men with faces just like his, promising that he was still destined to chase his old ways, that his lust for material delight would never be sated, that he’d never find any comfort in any place less than perfect, in any power less than absolute. That he might as well turn back now.

Instead he stomped down the saloon stairs, spite in every movement, hoping every single one of his ancestors could see him and that they knew he was no longer taking their advice.

The saloon below was barely awake, all the chairs back up on their tables, the glasses cleared from the night before, the light still soft, lazy, shinning onto the hardwood floors, a window propped open, bringing in the breeze to lift the curtains from their sills.

“Jesus, darlin’, I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m doing this right, I’m gonna start over.”

“Don’t-just… give me a go, hold it still.”

He rounded the corner towards the voices, to where Hana and McCree were standing among the tables, the last to leave and the first to arrive, doing as they were asked. They were standing together, McCree half bowed behind her, a tray under his arm, using both hands to tie her apron straps around her waist, eyebrows furrowed, a pencil behind his ear. Hanzo watched for a moment with his hand on the banister, watching them bicker and fiddle, Hana reaching back and being swatted away as McCree fumbled, clearly not used to such a delicate procedure, not as sure or as practiced as he was pulling ale or laughing at a customer.

Hanzo came to stand at their periphery.

“Good morning.”

They both startled, looking up at him, surprise in their eyes, blinking at him as though they’d forgotten that their hotel occasionally housed guests, that they might expect to see one on an average morning. Even so, it only took a moment for McCree to smile at him, as if it had all come back to him, as if he’d remembered that he was an innkeeper and this was an inn and Hanzo’s presence at the bar was hardly surprising, a good sign even.

“Well, good morning, Mr Shimada, you’re up early,” he grinned at him, hands still moving, suddenly accomplishing his goal with practiced ease, pulling a bow, neat and plain, patting Hana’s shoulder as he stood straight. “All done, darlin’.”

Hanzo watched Hana frown, watched her eyebrows furrow and a slender hand reach around to pat the bow, feel it’s shape, identical to the one around McCree’s waist as well. Her eyes narrowed as she felt it.

“Je- _sse_ ,” she hissed, turning to him as he scuttled away, head ducked as though he expected her to throw something at him, “you said you’d do it the fancy way.”

But McCree was already slithering behind the bar, slipping away from her and whatever annoyance she was capable of expressing. He was dressed much the same as he had been the night before, smoothed down to clean black and white lines, his hair up in its tie, his smile friendly, his shoulders relaxed, at ease and nothing like Hanzo’s childhood had been. Even his servitude was different than the servitude he was used to, his services offered without threat, without fear, just a matter of equal exchange, so unaware of Hanzo’s capacity for harm, the wrath he had in him.

McCree ignored Hana as she pointedly thrashed around behind him, making certain he’d know she was upset, not satisfied by his scheme, whatever it was that he’d failed to get done. Perhaps if he’d known them better, Hanzo might have offered his help, knowing that he had enough experience with obis to make a pretty knot or two, if that was what the young woman wanted. But he knew it was best to keep his distance, remain silent, unapproachable, cold.

They already knew more of him than he’d like; he’d already made more mistakes than was acceptable.

He still couldn’t say why he’d found himself so determined to break that man’s wrist, to take a revenge that wasn’t his, that should have meant nothing to him. He’d seen young women brutalised before, seen young women prettier, younger, fairer, kinder, more noble, less sharp. He’d seen them beaten worse, heard them beg, their fear harsher, louder, banging against the inside of his skull. But never had he crossed the floor, never had he reached out, intervened, demanded justice, for the wrong to be punished, for the good to prevail, as if he wasn’t so keenly aware of where on that spectrum he fell.

A shadowy feeling had settled on his shoulders after it was done, after his mistake had been made, McCree’s eyes gone from him, his rage seeping out of him as quickly as it had come, left cold and horrified in the din of the bar. He’d slunk back to his booth, back to his maps and his papers, his bottle of whiskey. He’d watched Hana return to her table after her supper, a flock of players gathering around her like birds settling back on a wire, as if nothing had happened, as if he couldn’t now feel his own father’s eyes burning into the back of his neck, his firm voice whispering that there was no offence worse than to give valuable things away with no promise of reward.

He’d decided to drink, anything to think less of it, pouring glass after glass of whiskey, letting his maps fall away from him as his mind got frail, weak and weary, unable to keep his eyes from drifting upwards, not to Hana and her fast flying fists, but to McCree, sunlike at his bar, glowing, bathed in golden light, shimmering, bright and deep like desert sands. He couldn’t keep from looking to him, looking to him from the shadows he’d drawn around himself, from the depths of his darkness like he was something hungry in the night and McCree was a campfire in the distance, standing behind his bar in his apron, his eyes so quick and coyote teeth, canines curling out of his mouth as he laughed.

And he’d wanted to go and sit there, to take a place at the bar, to feel McCree’s attention on him, have him say more nice things to him, like a cat curling up on sun-warm stone, wanting to stretch out under his gaze, warmed by him, resting against him, by his campfire of a body, the halo of light that encompassed him, let it encompass him too. Instead his father’s voice had slithered into his ear, and he’d slithered upstairs, _you are not hungry, you are weak, you are a fool._ He’d slunk back into his room, unable to break himself back down, yearning for the simplicity he’d felt that morning, seeing McCree on the porch, Hana behind her bar, set pieces rather than people, blank of inner lives, complexity, and him the same, just a stranger at the stage play; here one day, gone the next.

Not that it had remained that way for long.

“You want some coffee, Mr Shimada?”

McCree spoke as he was reaching cups down from one of the high shelves behind the bar, up on a stool, back turned, and Hanzo should have run, should have made it explicitly clear how cold he could be, that he would not need to be waited on by him, directions to the seamstress, that he’d be gone by the time the afternoon came, unwilling to become a character in this production, charming as it was.

But instead, instead he smiled, a small and quiet thing, leaning down on his cane, a good coat over his shoulders, cuff links sparkling at the ends of his sleeves, as foreign to this place as it was to him and instead he purred “Please.”

McCree smiled at him over his shoulder and the horror washed away like the tide going out before the hurricane comes.

…

He walked slowly, a warm breeze blowing gently at his back, surrounded by neighbours and townsfolk, all the moving parts of the town, people doing what they must, letting the day pass as he tried to take them in. Alongside the road, storefronts were dusty, littered with rocking chairs and grandmothers, cross stitch projects, cups of coffee, clothes being mended. And it was peaceful, the air still, the movement slow even in the mid-morning bustle, nothing violent that couldn’t be solved with the brutality of a young woman or a barkeep with a free drink and a smile.

He could see that their time was well spent on physical things, thinking only of the things needing to be done before sundown, maintaining a town that would have crumbled without them living there, haggling with each other about the price of grain or the quality of a horse, repairing a porch railing, selling elixirs from the station steps. They were sweet even left un-policed in the desert, preferring the ease of generosity than the effort of evil. Even out here, so deep in the wilderness, with the law stretched so thin, resources so scant, they were gentler than he’d ever been in the city.

But Genji would have been bored.

Hanzo found himself thinking it every time he walked down the main street of some merciful small town, that Genji would have been bored.

He would have been bored for the lack of extravagance, the lack of luxury, the quiet patience of people born without that Shimada greed thrumming through their veins, women drying their hands on their skirts, rags slung over shoulders, no gems and no great dissatisfaction for lack of them. In the beginning, those first few weeks on the road, he hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around their lives, as though they were lessons written in a foreign script that he was unequipped to learn, unable to understand how they weren’t as hungry as he was, always hungry, always wanting. How their goals could be lacking in such grandeur, how they didn’t thirst for more, only ever looking for comfort instead of power, hungry but only for what could be eaten.

And the more he dug, the more alien to him they became.

It made him miss Genji.

But he had to remind himself that the way he missed Genji was different from the way he missed his silk robes and real silver, his mahogany furniture and Persian rugs.

He missed Genji knowing he had never learned to miss him, that he’d never been taught to distinguish between the quality of brothers. His mother had taught him to hold fine fabric between his thumb and forefinger, to ask about thread count and origins, he’d been taught good food from bad by arbitrary measures, to know the shine of silver and the makes of porcelain. But those were things he’d had to learn, things that had been grown in him, missing Genji had no beginning and it would have no end.

He carried it with him always, even on the days when he could no longer tell where the teacups were from just by looking.

And he was heart heavy just thinking of it, swapping his cane from hand to hand as he walked, pushing on, missing his brother and the life he’d had, stuck in company he couldn’t understand and thick with persistent discomfort, never at rest, not like he’d been. But he breathed deeply, shaking off the thought, knowing that all he could do was hold his head high as walked towards the seamstress in the cool fall sunshine, in this town he didn’t recognise, refusing to buckle under the pressure, refusing to mourn.

He wouldn’t mourn that life, no matter the homesickness that ached in him, no matter the ancestors that hung over him, relatives and family members whispering that there was no place for a Shimada among the prairies and wheat fields, that he’d starve here, like they’d warned him he would.

If he was destined to starve, then he was resigned to it.

…

Behind her counter, polished by elbows and soft cloth varnish, the seamstress counted the buttons he’d chosen into a small pouch, the shirts and such already wrapped beside her. While seamstresses and tailors were growing fewer and farther between the further along the train line he moved, he had to admit that old fashioned craftsmanship was becoming easier to find, more common in the wind-swept isolation of a small town than the bustle of a half-rural metropolis where one might expect to be swindled.

And he was grateful for it, having walked from one side of the shop to the other, inspecting the clothes, the fabrics, not fine in nature, but hardy and easy to clean, two qualities he was finding more and more attractive. He bought from her three shirts, two cotton, one silk, four handkerchiefs to be embroidered with his initials, two pairs of socks, both wool, a gold watch chain, six gold plated buttons for his good velvet waistcoat, and a pair of boot laces, all of them neatly folded and wrapped in canvas for the walk back to the inn.

There had been times in his life that to carry his own purchases would have been unthinkable.

“You’re staying at the McCree place, yes?” She spoke briskly as he was tucking his purse back into his pocket, unprompted, and he couldn’t help but blink back in surprise, the corners of his mouth turning down. Her eye was lowered, watching her own hands, wrinkled and precise, placing the coins carefully into the register, but flickered pointedly up at him when he failed to respond, something annoyed in her frown, as if irritated by his wasting of her time, as if she wasn’t the one who had asked the question.

“Yes,” he found himself answering, “I am.”

The seamstress gave a little “hmm” and blinked as she closed her till, her one eye rising up to him, unfazed and scrupulous.

“There was nothing wrong with his mother’s menu,” she spoke firmly, as though he had context, knew what she was talking about, looking up at him with her tight little frown. “Tell him I don’t like that he changed it.” He stared at her as she held his package out to him, lifted up by the twine she’d tied it with. “Off you go then.” And baffled, he went.

…

He walked back to the inn slowly, stepping down onto the dusty street with his package tucked under his arm and his gaze cold and steady. He knew little of the lives that were lived here, but he knew enough to think that the happenings were strange, that the reception of strangers was nothing clear, nothing obvious. Some eyes followed him keenly, others found him and left him without a second thought. It was as though townsfolk were still undecided amongst themselves, making up their minds, drifting between thinking him either a problem, a prospect, or nowhere in between. But most days he was not asked to carry messages, most days he was weighty only with his own words, given no insights, offered no participation in the stage play. And it left him feeling uneasy, uneasy like watching clouds gathering on the horizon, not certain if he’d get caught in the deluge.

It was a strange relief to near the inn, to know that he could be rid of this part he’d been given to play before anyone noticed that he was saying his lines. It was a further relief to notice a figure sitting there, sitting at one of the porch tables and know it was McCree, McCree the innkeeper sitting in the sun outside his inn, eyes down on a newspaper, the headliner in full costume, sweet and easy. It soothed him more than it should, to have the roles so clearly defined, given no grey areas to contemplate and it settled him to think so little.

He found himself coming to rest in front of the porch like a creek pooling into a lake, standing in front of McCree, his voice was coming out of his mouth without even thinking of it.

“Why, Mr McCree,” he said, as if taken over by something deeper than his shallow tension, something that wanted to speak after so long as a quiet man, “you look positively serene.”

McCree’s gaze shot up to him, standing there on the street with his package under his arm, choosing to speak to him even with no requests to make. But for half a second, Hanzo saw something unidentifiable whip through his eyes, something sharp, and quick, something that didn’t take kindly to being caught unawares. But then it was gone, gone so quickly he questioned whether he’d seen it at all, McCree softening all easy and calm, the coyote that his ancestors must have been vanished from his shoulders, smiling at him, coffee perched in his hand.

“Well,” he drawled, “the sunshine ain’t gonna be here for long, Mr Shimada, gotta take advantage.”

“You are waiting on the winter?”

“Not today I’m not.”

McCree grinned at him and he laughed, an honest to goodness laugh, bubbling out of him, right unexpectedly, coming from nowhere, knowing that he didn’t have a space inside of him for that sort of business.

“You’ll sit, Mr Shimada?” The offer was a simple one, gentle, easy to decline, easy to dismiss if he wanted to. But despite himself, he didn’t, he wanted to sit, to join him in taking advantage of the sun, an imposter, enjoy a cup of coffee with him, this strange small town man. It made him wonder what it was, what it was that was doing this to him, producing these anomalies, piercing through the indifference he’d worked so hard to cultivate.

But he had no time to think of it, not before he found himself easing himself into the nearest chair, slipping so thoughtlessly into his company, the table between them, McCree calling for a fresh pot of coffee, a boy appearing a half second later with the request, Hanzo’s package tucked under his chair.

“Your visit to the Amari shop went well then?”

All of McCree’s words were innocent, poring rich black coffee into a cup for him, expression clear of turmoil, clear of strife in a way Hanzo’s had never been.

“Well enough,” Hanzo answered, “she requested that I tell you she doesn’t like your new menu,”

It took McCree a moment to laugh, but when he did it was rich and good like hotcakes and butter, the noise warming him all the way down to his bones, the tinderbox inside his ribs giving a flicker, starting to kindle as he watched McCree lean back in his chair, his grin slow, eyes drifting back to the street.

“I changed that menu three years ago,” McCree chuckled, crossing his leg back over his knee as he smiled, “I don’t think I can be held accountable for her concerns if they’re just coming up now.”

“I’m sure.”

There was something disarming about him, or at least, something that disarmed him.

Something that gently removed every dagger he had hidden, the poisons forgotten behind the stones of his rings, the blade taken from the pin in his hair, just watching the sunlight catch the gold ring in his ear, certain that if he’d been able to hear McCree’s heartbeat it would have been steady. He barely recognised his own voice as it came out of him, drinking their coffees together, sitting on the porch, no point to keeping each other’s company, no purpose performed. And it should have felt strange to him, the newspaper folded over McCree’s knee, strangers strolling by, talking about nothing, disarmed and so far from his home.

But McCree made it easy, so calm and bizarre, sweet talking, slow and charming, looking at him as though he were simple, as though he was already known down to his nature, understood completely, as simple as two men sitting in the sun on a Tuesday morning could be. He seemed to create a space, open a door, so that they could exist undisturbed, uncomplicated.

He’d never been talked to like McCree talked to him, as if he was no more than he appeared to be, nothing weighty, no reputation, no status, no history, no lineage, just enough distance between them that he was given a space to keep his secrets, to expose only what he meant to expose, nothing more. McCree spoke to him as though he was a maiden caught undressing, keeping his eyes to himself, making no fuss, talking to him with his back turned, his voice light as if even if there were secrets, he wasn’t going to mention them.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with sweet tea, Mr Shimada, you’ve just been drinking it wrong.”

McCree spoke as he was leafing through his newspaper, and Hanzo was launched back into the conversation they must have been having before he’d become so distracted by the bottom of his coffee cup, examining the sense of ease that had settled over him the same way he examined the coffee grounds, making constellations against the porcelain, eyes rising to him.

On his shoulder, some version of Genji muttered about small minds, about the lack of mahogany or marble, the dusty street unpaved and children set loose, scrambling around town in packs. On the other is father hissed about complacency, but Hanzo kept his eyes on McCree, sitting beside him, all leaned back in his chair, apron still white, shoulders still broad, his dark hair tucked behind his ears.

And he felt his voice come out of him, opening his mouth and not knowing what he might say, what rules he might break, the words curling out of him, participating in the play, saying his lines, saying them with something like enjoyment even as his nose crinkled.

“It’s heinous, Mr McCree, Americans have no idea what tea should taste like.”

McCree just tutted and shook his head, eyes on the black and white records of the town in his hand, Hanzo turning his gaze back towards the street, fully aware that he should have gone upstairs, should have kept his distance. But he was greedy, had been born greedy, he wasn’t built for holding himself back, for resisting temptation, from even such a simple thing as a conversation, an argument about sweet tea, a man who spoke without prose or agitation, who offered nothing he’d been taught to seek.

“I won’t have you cursing peaches, Mr Shimada, anything they’re in is a gift to this earth,” McCree turned the newspaper over in his hands, squinting at the words, “Well would you look at that, the Bonney's have called the baby Eudora. It only took ‘em three weeks to come to a verdict.”

“What were they calling the baby before?”

“Pumpkin.”

Together they sipped coffee and contemplated this.

…

He slipped upstairs after lunch, to lay his things out on the bed, the new shirts, socks, attaching the watch chain to the watch and placing it carefully down on the desk, the window half open to let the breeze in, the soft ticking onwards the only sound in the room besides his own breathing. When he’d been a boy, it had been his task to wind it, the metal heavy in his small palm, sitting on the floor beside the hearth each evening, just before bed, Genji watching on as he undertook his special job. He didn’t think he would have coveted the watch as harshly as he had if Genji had not wanted it so badly also, knowing that their father was watching, that he would be given no other job but this.

When he was eighteen, his father had given it to him, wrapped in velvet and history, a privilege to hold it, an honour to own it, a privilege and an honour, a privilege and an honour, over and over, nothing given without cost, no gift without weight, a weight he was asked to carry with him always.

And every evening still, he wound the watch, knowing that he’d wanted it when it had been given to him, knowing he’d wanted it so badly, so unaware that every day he carried it, the more ingrained it would become, as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror, as the hands at the ends of his wrists. His grandfather’s watch, his father’s cane, his waistcoat commissioned by his mother, a necktie from a great uncle, antique daggers from his grandmother, burdened by heirlooms and legacies, records he was expected to keep.

They weighed him down, but he straightened his spine, sneered, and strode onwards regardless, sitting at a desk in an inn thousands and thousands of miles away from his home, from wherever his father was at this moment, from wherever they’d buried Genji, buried his mother, buried their secrets.

But even with the anxiety wrung out in his belly, there was peace to be had in this small room, so distant from the grandeur he’d endured in childhood, alone and unseen, no reliance on the eyes of others. Here, it didn’t take a lot of light to keep the shadows from the corners, here all entryways and exits could be seen from the comfort of his bed, a man below that would stop any stranger from climbing the stairs to get to him. There was beauty to a room he could barricade, in a room that could have been washed clean of him in a moment, no evidence left of his ever being there.

Here, in his quiet room, he could trust on the unseen hands, his bed made, sheets tucked where he’d left them strewn, clothes returned to him laundered and pressed, left where he’d find them, silent figures putting his room back together every morning for him to take apart at dusk. If left for long enough, he’d be packed away entirely, the room remade for some other traveler to slip into, and no one would ever know he’d been there at all.

For the time being, it was a temporary haven, his temporary haven, plain and uninhabitable but his.

Slowly, he set out his things, the inkwell, the pen, the letter paper he had tucked away, out on the desk. Beside the watch, he placed them all neatly, seated in front of the window, by the broad autumn sky outside, the sweet chatter of the town below, haunting him, as if he wasn’t haunted enough already.

_Brother._

He wrote.

_You would hate it here, but I have met a man._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's lyric comes from the song I Will Smile When I Think of You, by J. E. Sunde, which is a sweet little swing. 
> 
> Also, you know that feeling when you wake up in a roadside motel in the middle of the South Australian desert, slowly making your way from Broken Hill to Adelaide and its forty degrees in the morning and everything is soft edged and slow and you feel so disconnected from the rest of the world that it feels like you could just be quiet for the rest of your life? Because yeah.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mr McCree, I have seen seven parasols go by, surely there can be no more women left in your town.”
> 
> McCree had glanced up.
> 
> “Give it a week, Mr Shimada, it’ll be all shawls next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's raining here, but the rains have at least come when they were meant to. And I have spent the day editing this and combating my own urge to do laundry.
> 
> There's something in me that wants to string up lines through the living room and spend a few days ducking beneath clothing and sheets. I want to fill this space with the smell of warm fabric, damp and clean, to give this watertight apartment some evidence that outside the birds are needing to take shelter, to bring the rain inside. But I know that it would be ridiculous to do so, that my flatmate would rightly protest, so instead I've made soup which I eat by the window, looking out at the grey sky, listening to the rain on the roof, trying to still feel tethered to that outside world.
> 
> Enjoy.

_There's no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on._

_You've just got to keep on keeping on._

With the curtains drawn, the saloon burning quietly beneath his feet, he emerged from the bath, lukewarm and still smelling of soap and steam, a sense of dread so heavy in his chest it felt like a billiards ball weighing down his ribs. Discomfort rolled around in his belly as though he was seasick on dry land, slipping a robe over his shoulders and walking from the bathroom to the bed and back again, his footsteps leaving puddles on the floorboards as he collected his things and packed them away with jittery haste.

He couldn’t even sit, not in the state he was in, just stood by the desk, anxiously filing his nails, trying to drag himself back up onto his podium by the tips of his fingers, trying to reconstruct his steadfast position in the hierarchy even with every transgression stitched into the hemlines of his clothes, going over every limb for faults. He knew nothing, but there had to be something wrong with him, there had to be some malfunction, some slip in some knot, rust in the mechanics, there had to be some reason that he found himself so fragile, so weak.

He broke a nail.

In three days, he’d come to know the rhythms of the morning like a bird learning the seasons, learning the movements of the inn as it revolved around him. He had come to recognise the barely there lull of the dawn, breakfast served to only those who asked for it, tea and coffee served to all, the sound of the newspapers landing on the veranda and the curtains pushed back on their rods, footfalls on the stairs, the sing of the kitchen door swinging open. Each morning he’d learned to pass Hana behind the bar as he made his way out into the day, sitting on a stool as she read her magazine, each morning he’d learned the words she’d say.

“Good morning, Mr Shimada. Can I get you anything?”

“No Miss Song.”

And the next day again, her dark eyes cool, the flicking through the pages, no doubt flicked through a hundred times before.

“Good morning, Mr Shimada. Can I get you anything?”

“No thank you, Miss Song.”

And again.

“Mr Shimada, can I get you anything.”

“No, Miss Song.” 

For three days he’d passed her on his way out into the day, for three days McCree had invited him to sit beside him on the veranda, and for three days, he’d sat, finding himself at McCree’s table in the mid morning shade. For three days he’d had common sense dismissed in favour a cup of coffee and company, warm in the fall sun, one knee crossed over the other, watching McCree’s eyes twinkle, hair tucked behind his ears, listening to him talk.

On his second day he’d had his hair trimmed, his cheeks close shaven by the barber, an enormous man in a white shirt and suspenders, white haired and German, the shave clean and the cologne sweet like vanilla and sharp like rice wine. By the time he’d gotten back, McCree had been exactly as he’d been the day before, sitting there in the sunshine, bathed in golden light, making something hungry in his belly stir like an old beast roused, eyes blinking open, a scent caught on the wind, nearing him and already hoping he’d be asked to sit.

And he was, so he did, slipping into his company like a body into a cool bath on a hot day, ducking into the shade with a weight lifted from his shoulders, his cane hooked over the back of his chair, sinking into the sun to talk of the comings and goings, of the unspooled day.

“Mr McCree, I have seen seven parasols go by, surely there can be no more women left in your town.”

McCree had glanced up.

“Give it a week, Mr Shimada, it’ll be all shawls next.”

And it had been easy, talking idly about the clothing of women, knowing that behind closed doors the holes made by moths were being silently stitched, patched in living rooms, the winter stores being counted, the preparations being made, the two of them sitting together on the porch to watch the seasons change.

The next morning McCree already had a coffee cup set out for him when he arrived, a pot with more than enough for two, waiting for him with a cigarillo between two fingers, the ash tapped into an ashtray, one long leg folded over his knee as he watched the town go by. And he’d looked up as Hanzo had walked down the street towards him, dark eyelashes so long, smile so thoughtless and eager, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth, something almost pleased in his gaze as he’d watched Hanzo approach.

And it had been a long time since anyone had dared look at him like that and it made quiet things begin to burn, smiling back at him as the slow lick of warmth unfurled, heat against his chest, down his sides, made of embers. McCree made him feel like some daring thing, circling just outside the light, hungry, starving at the sight of an exposed throat, an open bag, like a thief with itching fingers and the lost purse, smiling all slow, as though he too was something harmless.

The blow had come when he’d least expected it, watching the women walk by, mentioning, almost carelessly, that the days were getting shorter, getting cooler, talking just to hear himself speak, to participate, muttering that it must be due to the winter. McCree had turned a page in his newspaper and said without raising his eyes:

“You’re as quick as silver, Mr Shimada, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

And for a beautiful half moment he’d happily burned, warmth writhing in his chest, smiling out at the street, satisfaction heavy and pleasant against him.

Before his stomach had dropped and he’d been frozen in his seat, eyes wide, realising what he was doing, where he was, a horrified flush shivering up his throat, mortified, pins prickling against his skin as it all dawned on him, his father’s hand like a claw in his hair, yanking his head back, suddenly able to see it all. Someone might as well have come along and thrown a glass of cold water in his face, the warmth vanishing, fire sizzling, retaken by the shadows, by the long night, cold claws dragging him back from the sunshine.

And all he’d been able manage was to splutter out some stilted excuse, ricocheting upwards like a doll on a spring, chair pushed back from beneath him, feigning some frightened urgency, forgetting his cane, refusing to go back for it. Humiliation had hurtled through him, cheeks hot as he stood in his own room with his head in his hands, forced to consider who he was talking to, letting that man talk to him like that. He could still see McCree’s surprised expression when he closed his eyes, looking up at him as he’d whipped passed, probably unaware of what had caused their conversation to cease, probably confused, startled, Hanzo’s coffee left half drunk by his elbow, cane hanging abandoned off the back of his chair.

He’d decided to have a bath, as though he could wash him off his skin, scrub away the desire to feel McCree’s eyes on him.

On one shoulder Genji hovered, grinning, knowing that Hanzo was in deeper with this small town than he’d been in with any of the others, and on the other, his father snarled out his warnings, sneering at the room he found himself so content with, knowing that it was so tremendously below his station. And in an instant he’d known that it would be a terrible thing to stay here, that every minute was a risk he’d failed to mitigate, failed to recognise, wading only deeper into the waters.

At least it had become abundantly clear to him that he had to get out of here.

It was something in the way McCree had been looking at him these past mornings, _quick as silver, Mr Shimada,_ something about the cup that had been waiting for him, _something good about a fella_ , sitting on a sun warm chair in a sun warm town, it was infecting him, invading him. He’d let that moment of burning take him so easily, knowing that McCree was being dry, knowing that he was being teased, that McCree was growing fond of him, and like an endless night, a decade long dark, it only took the tiniest shimmer of light to start him imagining the sun, imagining the morning, the day, the full cartwheel, from beginning to end.

And it terrified him.

So far west and still something in him was so desperate to keep playing by the rules, rules that stayed with him like his well pressed clothes, his sense of satisfaction in gold and silver, knowing that he had his father’s eyes, his father’s impatience, a creature of habit. He wanted order, wanted control, he wanted things to remain constant, he wanted McCree back behind his bar, wanted him chained too to his position, stuck as he was stuck. Instead McCree was unshackled, instead McCree roamed far enough to offer him a seat, to grow pleased to see him; instead it was only him who stayed chained, respected the bindings.

And all of a sudden he couldn’t bare it, raking ragged hands through his hair, jittery like a flightless bird with only the anatomical memory of where his wings had been. He fluttered with panic and somewhere below, McCree went about his day, unknowing of all the rules he’d broken.

…

Hana led him past the bar, through the kitchen doors, allowed into the belly of the inn but not allowed to linger, to peer into any of the rooms. They swept past the kitchens, the boiler room, doors that stayed closed, corridors that he was not led down, things he was not given access things to, intimacy denied. And he was grateful for it, to be held at arms length even when the journey passed so close to enemy territory, knowing full well that he was the beast with teeth, that if the deer didn’t run he would devour it like any hungry predator would, disregard his own chains.

And this place made him feel so _hungry._

Hana seemed warier of him than McCree, pleasant but distant, leaving him as a guest and not allowing him any closer, smile open and warm, but flickering, able to change in an instant. And he understood, certain that many men must have been gentlemanly to her before they revealed true and twisted faces, just waiting to get a young girl alone. Just waiting so that they could be ugly, so that they could let their fangs extend, eyes grow dark, devour in all the ways he wouldn’t. But she walked with her head held high, had taught herself that she had her own fangs, had her own dark eyes, that she was a thousand times more rabid than they could ever be.

Nonetheless, he kept his eyes down and hands by his sides, no sudden movements, two fanged creatures keeping their fangs to themselves.

All afternoon he had been trying to fortify himself, trying to build walls, brick by brick with his untrained hands, teaching himself to wait, to stay standing like he could change his nature in an afternoon, in a couple hours, a bath and a fresh outfit and he’d be born anew, reborn with something resembling restraint in his brand new bones. But even as he walked, he knew deep down that he’d been built for indulgence, born hungry, born to sink his teeth into the first offered throat, to take advantage of any open door, offered seat, a man with sunlight in his eyes.

He couldn’t stay, the walls would not last.

The voice he’d given Genji whispered into his ear, walking along behind him, grinning all wicked and smug, “You drink knowing you’ll wake burdened, brother, but this, this you resist.”

In front of him Hana pushed open a door, stepping from the afternoon shadows to the afternoon sun, warm and still, the summer flies all gone but the sun still broad, light and clear even with the chill starting to shiver through the air. They emerged onto a porch, and beyond that, a yard, as long and wide as the inn itself. On one side, rows of sheets were drying in the wind, pearly white, gently lifting in the breeze, on the other was a pen, the chickens he’d been hearing, green grass fresh and bright, lavender bushes growing full and happy at the foot of the porch.

But no McCree.

“Hey Jesse!” Hana hollered and he flinched at the sound, eyes flickering to her, her hands coming to rest on her hips, looking petulantly out into the yard, a beautiful child. “He’s probably with the horses. He always is.” She stomped down the steps, pulling up her skirts as she landed on the day-dry grass, and after a moment he stomped after her, cane clutched in his hand, realising that he was meant to follow her further, more private spaces he was so ill-equipped to resist.

Together they made their way towards the sheds down the far end, stables he supposed.

“What use are horses to a tavern anyway?” He found himself asking, marching after her as she strode.

“We take them to market,” Hana answered, sounding almost bitter, kicking at the grass as she walked, “we don’t need both of them, but they’re his horses, he won’t seperate them.” And he knew the holler was coming this time by the way she her raised her hands to her mouth to call out to him. “Hey Jesse!”

And he was almost surprised when McCree called back.

“Yeah, darlin’?”

Hana stomped onwards.

“Mr Shimada wants to talk to you!”

A moment later McCree emerged from behind the stables, a broom in hand, a battered hat on his head, eyes blinking in surprise. And yet, he was quick to smile, to offer his time, to hear whatever, so unburdened it made him look a horizon away, as though there could have been canyons between them. Hanzo stuck his nose in the air just to feel strong at the sight of him, squared his shoulders and tried to look cold and hard. He stood stone still and harsh as though it wasn’t some strange relief to see him, the starving body’s pleading question answered, comfort where he should have allowed none to foster. It was better to stave than to eat the poisoned food, he knew that.

But no matter how he wanted to keep his eyes from him, McCree looked at him with his eyes keen and clear, easy.

“Well, what can I do for you, Mr Shimada?”

And for a moment he considered just turning, just leaving, no grace, no poise, not bothering to pretend that he wasn’t ruffled by him, by her, their inn, their town and the life he’d never had, the life he’d never wanted to have had. Instead he stood straighter still and denied himself, held himself back as though he hadn’t taken so much from so many, as though the mortar wasn’t still drying between the bricks, playing pretend with imaginary armour, his unclassified heart, so pure of callouses, so open to a world that had been so unaccessible before, back when he’d been the shark in these waters.

“I simply wish to inform you that I will be leaving a day earlier than initially planned.” He watched the corners of McCree’s mouth turn down, blinking at him in confusion.

“Tomorrow?” He asked, as if to confirm his math.

Hanzo nodded.

“Yes,” he readjusted his hands in front of him, sitting on the head of his cane, “there is a favourable train leaving at ten, I will have vacated my room thusly, though you may keep the money I have given you.”

McCree just blinked at him, momentary before the adjustment, Hanzo watching the recalibration going on behind his eyes like a battlement changing the angle, the slow click of great machinery shifting in its foundations, until he seemed to come to his own internal conclusions. He leant his elbow down on his broom as he smiled at him, any surprise quietly swept away, replaced by gentle accomodation, hidden.

“Not to worry, Mr Shimada, I’ll have the boy take your bags back to the station in the morning.”

He smiled, and above them, dark clouds began to brew.

…

When he’d left McCree had told him to be back sooner rather than later.

“Storms a’coming,” he’d said, looking at him all soft eyed from behind the bar, leaning down on his palm with his hair in his eyes. Hanzo had turned away, kept his features still and stony, murmuring cold thanks. He’d slipped out the door with his air of finality firmly gripped in his fist, had walked with his gaze sharp as others were bustling themselves into their homes. He’d moved through town as the the grandmothers were being packed away from the storefronts and the afternoon storm above him made itself known like a bad debt, weighty and rumbling. A bitter little wind sweeping down the main street as his cane made impressions in the gravel and dust and he snarled at anyone who met his eyes. That afternoon, he found himself more steel than man, more prison than captive, both warden and ward and refusing to buckle, refusing to let his composure slip, not in a town like this, not with so many weakness already made so clear.

The Amari woman looked up as he entered, sitting behind her bench with a needle in hand, eyes squinting and mouth unsmiling.

And he looked back, equally so, standing in the doorway of her shop, preparing his departure from the town like he’d done a thousand times before, taking back all that he’d left, removing all the evidence of his coming and his going, the resupply and reparation. All he would leave was this growing sense of entanglement in his belly, he would leave it where it had grown, discarded on the porch, certain that if he hadn’t had it when he had arrived, there was no need to take it with him when he left.

She looked back down at her needlework as the door swung closed behind him, the bell ringing itself silent, the quiet din of the shop returned like a hostage, undisturbed by coming rain, by the sweet smell of the air and the roofs known to leak, buckets set out for the drips.

“I haven’t finished your hankerchiefs, you’ll have to come back later,” she said, dismissive before he’d even had the chance to speak.

“I’ll take what you have.”

The shop was unchanged since a few days before, rows of fabrics, a stool for fittings, mirrors, a small vase of lavender, almost identical to the lavender in his room, to the lavender lining the back porch of the inn, evidence of McCree’s having been here. And he couldn’t help how his stomach twisted at the thought, like a juggler watching the balls flying in the air, not certain if he had enough hands for this, unsure which ball would go tumbling first.

Amari frowned at him.

“I don’t do refunds,” she said, her voice firm, eyes narrow.

“Good, I don’t need one.”

He didn’t have the foundations for arguing, all he could do now was prioritise his own vacancy, his departure, dismiss her out of hand and hope he’d be able to slip away, get back to that ceaseless movement. All he could hope for was that he would forget, forget the feeling of sitting on the porch in the sunshine, that he’d caught it in time and it would have no more effect on him, hearing McCree’s voice in his ears, _quick as silver, Mr Shimada_. And he hoped that they too would forget, that first they’d forget his face, and then his name, and then everything in between, just another traveller, another man heading west with no destination in mind.

Quietly, Amari considered him, looking at him as he looked at the lavender, feeling as observed by her as he didn’t with McCree, given no space for his secrets, allowed no room, no options but to look at the flowers, the fabrics, the store, as if he didn’t notice at all, meandering around, her eyes making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, all his muscles tight and tense.

But no matter how he roamed, tried to make himself see peace, feel confidence, returned to the authentic arrogance he’d felt for the most of his life, her eyes stayed on him as though he was a puzzle to her, as though he was a weight refusing to drop, refusing to accept gravity and the inevitable plummet.

“You are short of time, Mr Shimada?” Her voice was low, almost accusatory as he ran his fingers over some cloth. He couldn’t look up at her, unable to produce the audacity necessary, the indignation required to make some irrelevant retort that might end the conversation. Instead he just kept her to his back and kept his eyes down.

“I have decided to take my leave,” he did not elaborate, he didn’t elaborate on motive, on purpose or catalyst, just walked around the shop with his spine straight, shoulders back, nose in the air, as though there weren’t chains around each ankle and each wrist, tethering him, dragged forward and dragged back, torn, as doomed as a man might get without being already dead.

Her sharp eye stayed on him.

“Whats the hurry?”

She asked all the questions McCree didn’t, looked at him all the ways McCree didn’t, and despite himself, he missed the veranda, missed the morning already, sitting idle, speaking without meaning to, being looked at only by McCree who looked gently, who accused him of nothing, asked no questions for which he had no answers. And being looked at by her, her gaze harsh and fierce, picking him apart so relentlessly, he could barely keep his shoulders from turning in, from running frustrated hands through his hair and yelling at her to just give him what he’d come for, and let him leave. Instead:

“None,” he spoke with his back to her and his voice a hiss, nose crinkling as he spoke, temper quick to flare, “a favourable train.” 

Behind him Amari sucked her teeth as she continued to sew, tutting at him as though he was a child, a teenager failing all the tests he was given, failing to see the truth in front of his eyes, to realise, to put together the facts like an apprentice detective with none of the tools.

“A pity,” she said, almost like a reprimand, offering him lines to read between even as he refused to do so, “Jesse tells me he enjoys your company.”

And in moments, he was engulfed like a forest fire, the words thrumming through him, flushed with warmth, his ears pricked like a dog tuned to a certain whistle, ablaze.

_Enjoys, enjoys, enjoys, he enjoys my company!_

_Quick as silver Mr Shimada, there ain’t nothing wrong with sweet tea, names McCree, Jesse McCree._

He burned, staring frozen at the rows of fabric rolls, trying to figure out what had happened to him, when he’d gotten so broken, when he’d gotten so desperate, so weak for praise, for flattery, some doe eyed part of him so pleased to be liked, for his company to be good that for a half second it took over the rest of him. For a second all every other part of him could do was just watch in horror as every soft part of him burst with a harsh delight, with a hissing desire to please him more, to be liked more, to bathe in whatever attention he’d offer.

With his back turned to her, he squeezed his eyes closed, Genji cackling in his ears, mentally dousing whatever he could get a hold of in cold water, determined that whatever flames he had in him, they could be smothered, the wood dampened, the tinder rotted away. He could crush this, kill this, he’d get better, he had to get better, he couldn’t live with more discomfort.

With gritted teeth, eyes thin, he turned.

“Be that as it may,” he snarled, “I really should going.”

She narrowed her eye at him and for a moment it almost appeared as though she was going to argue with him, hand tightening around the fabric in her hand. She opened her mouth as if to speak but closed it a moment later, considering her next move like a fighter readjusting their feet, trying to predict the best angle, the face of the attack.

He watched her closely, as much a fighter as she was, more so even, knowing he had more loose, that he’d utilise every dirty trick he knew just as long as he could leave, just as long as he never had to know whatever truths she could see in him. Her gaze slipped from him after a moment, as if in retreat, shrugging her shoulders and standing slowly on her creaking bones and tiered skirts, stepping down from her stool, her grip loosened on the fabric, tucking and cutting the thread, folding it twice over, as though that was it, as though they were done.

“You may have it,” she conceded, returned back to her vaguely hostile indifference, bellicosity vanished, “but I have only gotten as far as the ‘H’.”

“Thank you,” he answered, barely able to keep the growl from his voice, to keep from snatching it from her hand and storming out, refusing to even go back to the inn, preferring to be perceived by no one than the terrifying delight that flooded him every time McCree’s eyes struck his. Instead he just watched in icy silence as Amari returned the last handkerchief to its set, tying them up with ribbon, her old hands working swiftly and precisely. She looked up at him as he handed them over. She looked at him like she decided he was beyond repair, as though there was nothing to be done and he was no more her business than a wildfire in some distant forest; a pity, but nothing more.

“Theres another westward train at twelve, Mr Shimada,” she said, voice low, “should you miss the first.”

…

The moment he stepped out onto her storefront the heavens opened.

The water seemed to tumble out of the clouds with a kind of heavy certainty, a sigh, the dust turning to mud, and him, standing on Amari’s porch with his handkerchiefs clutched like pearls, dressed in his perfectly doomed clothes, his silk shirt that would soak through and his shoes no longer fit for the street. Above him the first crack of thunder breached the sky and the swollen sky seemed to shatter with the weight of the rain and each drop came heavy and desperate down towards the earth. He took only a moment to steel himself before he tucked his nose down and stepped out into the downpour, and like the dust, he too became mud.

Every droplet was fat with water, as cold as ice, running down his spine, beneath his clothes in a matter of moments, and suddenly he was shivering, half running back to the inn every part of him taunt. He shivered onwards, cane under his arm, heart in his throat, feeling still too well seen, feeling as though his fangs were not well hidden. It had felt as though, in those final moments, that Amari could see him, could see that he was his father’s son and he had only hatred and greed in him, that he was out of place, that he would devour to his own detriment and it would be good practice to just let him be, let him go and destroy himself somewhere else.

He staggered, getting colder, the rain loud in his ears, the sky roaring above him, great claps of thunder spurring him onwards, back towards the inn, so many chains tight around him it seemed impossible to keep track of them.

Some parts of him wanted nothing but to flee in any other direction but McCree, yearning for nothing but the safe treachery of kin, of his home, of walls he could trust to hate him, to fear him, to know their place. But alongside that longing, there was something else in him that sought a different kind of sanctuary. There were other parts of him that couldn’t see the poison for the food, for the hunger, the animal in him, always so clawing with hunger, with exhaustion, with fear and rage, willing to take, willing to steal, just to lie down for a while, just to get warmer.

He caved to it, just for a moment. He caved to it on the promise that by the next morning he’d be gone, he’d roam again and let the animal die, let it starve, he’d get better, he’d have to get better.

For the time being he let the wolf nudge him up the porch steps, sodden and freezing, shivering in his clothes. He let the wolf convince him to push the door open, weak willed, knowing that somewhere in this building there was a bed, a bed he could collapse into. And he was so ready to collapse, so hungry for warmth, for rest, for softness, welcome after a life that had been so sharp for so long. He let the inn take him back, McCree’s eyes on him, offering to draw him a bath as he left water droplets on the stairs, eyebrows pushed together, hand on the bannister, looking up at him in concern, and how it made the wolf howl, how it made the wolf howl to shake his head and leave him standing there, knowing that he’d succumb to soft linens, but that if he succumbed to whatever McCree might offer him, he would never reemerge.

…

He looked up as Genji slipped into bath next to him. His hair was long like when they’d been children, his skin pearly in the darkness, limbs too long for his body, like a fawn still getting used to standing on its own. Hanzo sunk deeper into the hot bath, mouth dipped beneath the surface, his breathing making ripples on the black water, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he inhaled in the steam.

Beside him, Genji splashed, watching his luminescent hand moving through the water.

“Why do you think I’m always glowing?” He asked, dark hair piled up on the top of his head, his shoulders bare and pristine in the darkness, like a moon on an inky black night. Hanzo didn’t rise up from the surface to respond, too hot and too slow to focus, just watched from below, watching Genji think as he gazed at his own fingers, watching the water drip down his wrist, “I think it might be a metaphor.”

Genji looked down at him, hand still extended in front of him, and Hanzo shrugged. To his credit, it probably was a metaphor.

Looking up at him, he could understand why Genji had always been considered the nicer looking of the two of them, but rarely had he been accused of being the smarter, the more sensible. There was a small part of him that missed being so attached to him, coming so securely in a pair, knowing that he didn’t have to be charming or beautiful, that he didn’t have to light up a room, make women swoon; he was the clever one, all he had to be was clever.

He looked back towards the bath, knowing that he’d find no edge if he tried to look for it, that the water went on forever.

“We’ve had this dream so many times,” Genji spoke slowly, voice echoing out over the water, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that light before.” Hanzo eyes lifted, following the light of his pearly hand, pointing into the distance, and there, on the horizon, something new flickered.

He stared at it, eyes widening, blinking as though this space didn’t show him only what he was meant to see, watching the flame flicker in disbelief, the smell of woodsmoke carried by steam filling the air, the red and orange light shimmering on the dark water, a hearth where there was no fireplace to sustain one, burning unaided.

“Do you think it’s him?” Before them, the fire burned silently, lit by nothing, licking at the air, and despite himself Hanzo nodded, knowing in his belly that it was him, this new thing, some manifestation, like the desert bound wanderer able only to see an oasis where there is none, unable to shift his eyes away, the animal awoken in his chest. Genji too looked towards the light, the orange seeming to play against his own light, reflected on his pale skin, “Well, that’s never happened before.”

In thick silence, they watched the flame, flickering on its own, a kind of beauty to it, so clear and crisp in the sweet darkness, not quite close enough to feel the fire’s warmth as the water began to grow cold around them.

“It’s kind of pretty, don’t you think?” Genji voice had grown cold with the water. He was a constant companion but sometimes Hanzo wondered if he would have preferred to have been left to non-existence, would have preferred to have been forgotten, consigned to the great oblivion beyond the bath, not stuck being dreamt of, a metaphor, ghosts of criminal’s past, of wrongs Hanzo had failed to right.

But the light was pretty, so Hanzo nodded, unable to take his eyes off it as the wolf prowled against his ribs, sinking deeper into the water, shivering, eyes unfocused.

“Probably prettier than you deserve.”

He nodded again, only his eyes above the water now, unbreathing, the water still, watching the flame grow, spitting and crackling, calling to him, prettier than he deserved, probably warmer too, sweeter, his chest growing tight, lulled by the flame and the cold, stagnant water.

Slowly, he looked up, up to Genji, his beautiful brother now broken, made broken.

Beside him, Genji looked back, bloodied, luminescent, moonlike, the cuts against his cheeks deep enough to see the shine of white bone, blood seeping into the water, hair cut short, eyes black and empty, ears shining with steel and silver, both of them so dishonoured in such different ways.

From the water, Hanzo began to rise, looking up at him, meaning to speak, to tell him he was sorry, that he’d burn if Genji would let him, that it was inevitable. 

Genji just growled, blood spilling from his mouth, and pushed him back beneath the surface, to drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's lyric is from First Aid Kit's song Silver Lining, specifically the Spotify version of it and I really enjoy it, so give it a listen if you're in a western mood. 
> 
> For those wondering, the rain in this chapter and the rain outside my window are a coincidence, but it certainly helped. For now though, I might go to sleep for a couple days until its sunny again. Soon the spring is gonna be here, I'm waiting for it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you not have a business to attend to, Mr McCree?” Hanzo found himself croaking.
> 
> McCree laughed breathlessly as he yanked the sheets off the corners of his mattress, back turned to him.
> 
> “Nah, Hana’s downstairs. She’ll call me if she needs me.”
> 
> “I can’t imagine that happens very often.”
> 
> McCree grinned at him as he tossed the sheets into his hamper.
> 
> “Less and less each day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is the point of the home remedy? Not even a remedy, just a practice. I know how the flu works, at least in a rudimentary way, but it doesn’t matter. Theres still something in me that starts twitching for oatmeal, hot water with a lemon slice in it, to start changing the bed linen. You know what that does? Fuck all as far as I know. Icy poles, they used to give us icy poles, Jesus. Orange juice. And now I’m older, and I’m stuck with all these habits, these practices of care, comforting myself with what was once used to comfort me, offering people around me these bullshit cures, hoping there might be some sort of cultural crossover, that maybe their parents tricked them in the same way. Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps me and my sisters tethered is that we were brainwashed with the same stopwatch, that they might be the only people who understand when all I can offer is oatmeal with brown sugar and hot raisins.
> 
> Anyway, this is your reminder to change your sheets . It really will make you feel better, I promise.

_Kid, you better look around,_

_How long you think that you can run that body down?_

From the deep, dark depths of the bath the sweetest voice came, “Mr Shimada, it’s me.”

The voice cut through the ice, dug through the cold, sunk down to him in the shivering blackness, and Hanzo woke dragging in breath after breath of steel-cold water, choking on it, suffocating, ears full of that voice, calling to him from the surface.

“Mr Shimada, I’m just getting a bit worried,” the voice said, “y’didn’t come down for breakfast is all.” The knocking was gentle, almost hesitant, calling down to him with lungs full of ice, every breath painful, chest tight, desperate for the surface, for air, for sunlight.

But it was McCree, he could tell that it was McCree, McCree who lived outside the bath, beyond his sinister inner world, his insidious little brother. It was McCree who couldn’t even be narrowed down to metaphor, McCree who looked at him in that way he did, McCree who was as consistent as the habits he kept, who offered him coffee, invited him to sit, McCree the innkeeper, the man. And even in that deep darkness he could feel the wolf, hear it howling, yearning, the tinderbox inside of him already starting to flicker, starting to warm his frozen lungs.

He surfaced in sheets, damp with sweat, eyes forced open as he tried to suck in breaths without choking, his mouth as dry as a bone, the inside of his lips dry and cracked, but awake, heat against his cheeks, full up on horror, on the dreams he’d had, eyes blurry as he tried to figure out where he was, where he’d been last. Around him, the world swayed, sunlight streaming into his room, all tangled up in his bedclothes like they were bindings and it was impossible to say whether the room was moving or he was, not until he found himself upright on the side of his bed, stomach lurching, the room around him still spinning.

He couldn’t think anything, but that there was something so wrong with him, so wrong that he didn’t even have the words for it, this terrible weakness, his body all wilted, his mind like pudding, nausea pitching through him like he was a ship on rolling seas, hand clamping over his mouth, wracked by coughs so painful they left him shaking. And all he could do was try to gasp out his objections from bed, try and stop this from happening between coughs, but his throat was so raw, his head so light, shaking, heat flushed against his sides, up his neck, an awful, sickly heat.

“Mr Shimada, I’m gonna open this door now,” his voice came as Hanzo’s eyes lifted to the door, to the shiny brass doorknob on the verge of turning, to McCree just behind that door, to McCree and the key he could hear sliding into the lock, McCree about to see him in this state he was in, this awful state. And he couldn’t think of anything, but that he didn’t want that, but that he had to take care of this, that he had to compose himself, that he couldn’t be seen like this, he had to protect himself, he had to get better, he couldn’t let this happen, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.

He stumbled upwards on legs shaking as he heard the sound of the key turning, of McCree just behind that door, meaning to press it shut, keep it closed, keep his reputation pristine.

He could take care of this, he could smother this, he wouldn’t be seen like this, weak and suffering, unclean and undignified.

If he was, then it wouldn’t matter at all his politeness, his fine pressed clothes, the gems at the ends of his sleeves. He’d be the animal he could feel prowling through his chest, revealing it all, that he could be uncouth, that he was vulnerable, filled with an awful mortal toil, head swimming as he staggered towards the door, determined to keep it down, keep it unseen as the room spun around him. He was the wolf that smelled of woodsmoke and McCree would see it, would see him and know that he was something that could starve.

His legs gave out from under him just as McCree opened the door, stomach dropping, staggering as he head spun, vertigo taking from him all balance, all sense, McCree’s shocked expression blurring in front of him as he fell, eyebrows together in concern. The next thing he’d registered was the impact, was a body pulled against his own, a heartbeat besides his own, his cheek against a chest, arms under his arms, keeping him up, held against the soft cloth of McCree’s shirt, the body beneath.

“There we go,” he heard McCree mutter, “I’ve got you,” his words seemed molten, rumbling out of him like faraway thunder, and Hanzo couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so close to another human body, the last time he’d felt such warmth, breathing, a beating heart, McCree flush against him, as much a man as he was. And the sensation sent a flood of heat through his head, fingers gripping clothes that weren’t his own, blinded by his own heat, feeling as though he was going to faint altogether, overwhelmed by warmth. He was dizzy and burning, engulfed in smoke, by the fire all but roaring in his chest, deafened by the flames, by the fact that his head was already swimming, still plagued by fever dreams and in McCree’s arms, in McCree’s arms.

“What…” his voice slurred, “is wrong with me?”

“Well, I ain’t no doctor, Mr Shimada, but I’d say you have the flu,” McCree answered as he was set down on the side of his bed, his own weight eased back to him, unable to keep his eyes open, raise his own head, unable to process the contact all at once, the flat of McCree’s palm on his spine, laying him back on the bed, “There we go,” he murmured as he worked, “that’s a good man, down you go.”

And all he could do was let him, let it happen, his body moved as though it wasn’t his own, piled back into bed as though he was someone else, heart dull and throbbing in his chest, eyes closed, breathing laboured as McCree moved around him, legs heaved up on to the mattress like a bundle of sticks in his arms, pillows put behind his head, blankets draped back over him. McCree put him back to bed like an escaped child in the night, suddenly so exhausted he could hardly function at all, let alone rise, sucking down wheezing breaths as another man smoothed down the blankets that covered him.

“Alrighty,” he could hear McCree moving around, hear him opening the windows, drawing back the curtains, letting in the fresh fall air, so unaware of the sense of doom that filled him, exhaling embers, a wildfire of a man, spitting and sizzling, bitter and burning, “here’s what we’re gonna do.”

He didn’t ask what Hanzo wanted, didn’t ask for his thoughts, just took control, took the lead like they were dancers and only he could hear the music, “I’ll send the boy for the doctor, and Hana can make her Mama’s soup. We’ll light the fire, and make some tea, and I gotta remember not to use the stove too much this winter, gotta get the chimneys cleaned,” McCree thrashed around as he spoke, almost as if he was speaking to himself, “a hot bath, thats what you need, Mr Shimada,” he muttered, “fresh sheets and a day in bed, you’ll be right as rain.”

A day in bed sounded nice, a day, a full day in bed.

Hanzo forced his eyes open as the realisation hit him flat in the forehead and a garbled noise of distress burst from his mouth where he’d been aiming for a word. He launched himself upwards, the motion sending his head spinning, seeing double, the false sense of security he’d allowed a few moments of prosperity stripped away from him like a table cloth whipped away from under a full set of china, all of his previous convictions suddenly coming screaming back to him, shattering on the floor.

He was going to get better, he had to get better, he had to get out of here. Panic thrust back through him.

“No,” he gasped, voice hoarse, hands fisted in the blankets McCree had laid over him, his knuckles white and his heart pounding, sitting upright in bed with his eyes wide, “my train, I have to catch my train.”

He through his blankets off in a flurry of poor coordination and panic, stomach pitching, eyes flickering just trying to locate his own coat, swinging his legs to the floor as McCree appeared before him, hands on his hips, eyebrows together, looking down at him, all undignified and unraveled. And looking up at him, this innkeeper, Hanzo was struck by the knowledge that he’d never been seen like this before, hair in a mess, in his night clothes, weak and wobbly, knowing that McCree could probably overpower him, force him back to bed, that he’d never been at this sort of mercy before.

And the thought made him want to vomit.

He may have wanted to vomit regardless.

“What train, Mr Shimada?” McCree’s voice was firm, weighty, “it’s eleven thirty.”

Hanzo stared at him with every muscle tense, teeth grit in his mouth.

“There’s another at twelve, Mr McCree, I won’t be hindered,” he spat the words, hissed them through his gritted teeth, knowing that there was no amount of politeness that could undo this, that could remove the notion from McCree’s mind, having seen him, understood how weak he was.

McCree squinted at him, and for a moment he let his head turn down, out of breath by the end of his own sentence, eyes squeezed closed as he tried to rally himself, hoping that through sheer will alone he could overcome this, could pull himself together. There was something in him so desperate and frightened, something childish and hopeless, stumbling to his feet, steadying himself on the bedside table, eyes rising to watch McCree’s shoulders tighten as he only just managed to keep himself from tumbling to the floor.

All he had in him to do was spit and hiss and snarl, was stand as tall as he could manage, pained by every breath, McCree standing so perfect and presentable at the centre of his room, kept together by a waistcoat and his good black slacks, mouth in a grim line, squinting at him with something skeptic, almost annoyed in his eyes.

“Mr Shimada, there are trains always coming. There ain’t nothing good that can come of this.” For the first time, a flicker of irritation whipped through his voice, his accent a bit sharper, hands on his hips, looking at him as though he was some small and petulant thing, as though he had hard lessons coming if he was intent on continuing like this.

“Be that as it may,” Hanzo hissed, holding onto the bed post for dear life, bedraggled and desperate, “I must be going, I am expected.”

He wasn’t expected.

But even the harsh indifference of travel was better than McCree’s eyes on him, gaze so even, so many things so hidden, so many things exposed, no space now for secrets, weak and afraid, terrified of the vulnerability that wracked him. But McCree must have been able to see it, must have been able to see his distress, how weak his will remained, because his expression softened and he pushed a sigh out through his nose, shoulders going slack, looking at him with a kind of exhausted patience. 

“Just sit down, Mr Shimada,” he said, something gentle in his tone, understanding, “I’ll take care of it.”

And for a moment, he considered protest, he considered poison, rage, whatever would get him out of here, an animal willing to chew through a limb, madness before defeat, whatever it took. But instead he sat like McCree told him to, as though he knew that he just didn’t have it in him, knew that he wasn’t built for it, to resist temptation, to embrace discomfort, not after so many years with his every need tended to, his every request answered.

“There we go,” McCree told him, voice gentle as he pulled the blankets back over him and his eyes closed, “It’s not so bad, Mr Shimada.”

And Hanzo didn’t even have the energy to tell him he was wrong.

...

“Mr Shimada, it’s me.”

His voice was soft, waiting behind the door to be invited in as if Hanzo still got to be in charge of this space, still got to decide who came in and who didn’t, got to decide as if McCree hadn’t already taken off without him. And there was so much of the circumstances that should have bothered him; McCree, a servant by trade, in charge, speaking to him so calmly, telling that he’d take care of it, that he was now just a passenger to this experience. It should have bothered him, born distrustful, born with that ten tonne authority on his back, taught so firmly that he was a Shimada, that any room he was in was a room under his control.

And yet, he’d let McCree settle him with hot tea that didn’t taste like home, a bed tray over his lap, propped up with a half dozen pillows at least, given a breakfast of cooked oats with raisins and cinnamon that he’d been unable to eat. He’d let McCree tell him that he was going to miss that train and that it was for the best that he did, let him explain that there was no need to go putting his health at risk, that he’d be taken care of here whether he liked it or not, that there was a doctor coming, that his well-being was no longer in his hands.

“Come in, Mr McCree,” he croaked, throat sore, papers spread out over his lap as though he still had business to attend to, an empire needing attention. He looked up as McCree let himself in, standing tall in the door way, attending to him instead of sitting on the porch like he was prone to doing at this time of the morning, smiling at him as though he’d hardly noticed the change of routine, so lovely and unbothered.

“Doctor’s here,” he said, stepping aside, door held open for his companion.

And inside stepped… the Amari woman?

He looked from her, the same as she’d been the afternoon before, to McCree and back again, back and forth as he tried to figure out what could possibly be going on with his so addled brain as they came to stand by his bed, both of them looking at him, Amari’s smile as cold as McCree’s was warm.

“Mr McCree,” he said slowly, looking up at him, “this is a seamstress,” McCree blinked at him as if to ask what the issue was, “Why have you brought me a seamstress?”

“Well-”

Amari interrupted him.

“I’m also a doctor,” her tone was so icy that even McCree looked down at her in surprise, her eye narrowed and set on Hanzo, “and a horticulturist, should you need one.”

“I do not,” he snarled.

“Thats good, because she’s not very good at it,” his eyes flickered towards McCree, his arms crossed across his chest, grinning down at him as Amari elbowed him hard in the stomach. He hardly seemed to notice, too busy chuckling at his own joke. And Hanzo couldn’t even summon a snarl for him, not with that small flame, a bundle in his chest, couldn’t growl at him knowing that he had a hearth for McCree inside of him, a bitter fondness that had burrowed into his belly, too wearied to be anything but exasperated by him, by his every smile, by his every offer of kindness, his every blindness to Hanzo’s endless capacity for hostility.

And if McCree noticed, he didn’t mention it, just smiled, almost as if he was playing a game with him, seeing how long he could last with someone being so shamelessly nice to him.

“Jesse,” Amari’s eyes were still on Hanzo, and for a moment he couldn’t understand that it wasn’t his name she said, McCree still grinning down at him as though he too hadn’t attached the name to himself. Her eyes snapped up at him. “Jesse, are you listening?”

“Oh-yes, me?”

They looked at each other, Amari with her eye narrowed, McCree with eyes so clear, so oblivious.

“You can go now, Jesse.”

McCree had the decency to blush, cheeks going rosy, revealing that he hadn’t even considered that it wasn’t his place to stay.

“Oh, yeah. Of course.”

And immediately panic roared up in Hanzo’s throat, knowing in an instant that he did not want McCree leaving him alone with her.

McCree was a threat all his own, perhaps worse, deadlier, but he was a good man who liked him. McCree had proved himself over and over again, had wrapped arms around him when he’d fallen, had put him to bed, McCree was soft hearted and easily broken, he could be trusted under circumstances such as these. Amari couldn’t, had proven herself only sour and sensible. And he wanted so badly to open his mouth, to reach out to him, catch his wrist as he turned, demand some service of him, something he’d have to perform in the room with them, something that would keep him nearby, a necessary buffer between him and Amari who could see him too clearly.

Instead all that happened was a flinch of his fingers, twitching in his sheets, mouth opening to ask him to come back, to do something for him, anything for him. Instead McCree just smiled at him, blind and kindly, Hanzo left helpless, left watching him tip an invisible hat to him, murmuring some courteous “Mr Shimada,” smiling down at Amari before he turned, turning away from him and his bedside.

“I’ll be downstairs if you need me, just holler.”

And with that, he slipped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him with a solid thud and Amari’s eye landed on him in an instant, finding themselves alone together again, stuck together again.

…

“Jesse asked me to come,” she shrugged, seated on a wooden footstool by his bed, “he said one of his guests was ill, said he was concerned, I didn’t know that it was you.”

“I didn’t ask him to go,” the voice was a snarl, but nothing like his own, weaker, raspier, gasping out of him with his throat dry, eyes stinging.

“You didn’t have to,” her voice was curt, as though she was defending him from some perceived slight, “its his way.”

And he wanted to snap some retort, wanted to hiss that he knew, knew that the coffee cup would be full before he took a sip, that he’d be offered a drink the moment he finished the first, that the doctor would be called the moment he fell ill. He knew. Instead he just ground his teeth at her and coughed. There was no part of him that didn’t feel pale and sweaty, that didn’t feel uncivilised, undignified, the train she’d told him to be on having long left it’s station.

He was the mistake maker, vulnerable in a sick bed, untended, and she looked at him so plainly, eyes narrowed, annoyed, as resentful of him as he was of her, with the positions they were forced into. And again, flames flickered for McCree under her gaze, wishing so dearly he hadn’t left the room, that he was still here, his easy smile, the bat of his eyelashes, his broad shoulders, his reliable service, so consistent, so sweet. If she had been a sheriff, he would have resisted arrest. If she had been a sheriff, she would have shot him before he could do so.

“Worry not, Mrs Amari, you will not have to tend to me long,” his voice was was weak, hissing like an old snake, and even now, lying in bed, he was the sort of tired he’d hardly experienced before, a deep body fatigue, as though if he lost concentration for just a moment his head would tip back and his eyes would slip closed and he’d be snoring. Only spite kept him functioning. “I’ll take the next train, you will see no more of me.”

Looking at him with blank contempt, Amari let out a bitter little laugh, mouth like barbed wire.

“You will do no such thing,” she answered, nose wrinkled, eyes dull, “I’m afraid, Mr Shimada, you have gotten on too well with the boy for your own good, he has started to care for you.”

The concept sent him reeling a blow to the stomach, and he couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, staring at her with his mouth half agape, trying to wrap his mind around the thought, around the shape of it, so foreign, so unfamiliar. _He cares for you,_ such a fundamental little thing, such a barely human little thing, such a basic little fact, that one man might come to care for another, over the course of only a few days, a few whiskeys, a few cups of coffee, a few conversations, one small miracle and then the next.

_He cares for you._

“I-I never asked him to.”

She tutted at him, head shaking.

“You didn’t need to, it's his way.”

Hanzo started at her.

“I didn’t want that.”

He’d never wanted any of this, he’d come to this seeking nothing but accomodation, a cup of coffee, some food to eat, some comfortable sheets, he’d wanted something easy. Like a swimmer, legs dangling in the dark water, he had not known there were sharks when he had waded in, seaweed tangling around his ankles. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t seen his own carelessness, the leaf litter on the ground, old and broken tree branches, dry roots, he hadn’t known what a tinderbox he could be, easily built and easily toppled.

He’d wanted to stay close to the ground.

Amari snarled at him.

“It’s not about what you want,” her words were sharp, pointed, shaking her head at him, doctors bag untouched and unopened at her feet, as though she meant to clear the air before she poisoned him and left him to slowly rot away in his sweated-through sheets, before McCree came up the stairs with a lunch he wouldn’t be able eat, found him with glassy eyes open and his dignity in tact.

“Oh please,” his words slithered out of him like a flinch, a habitual hostility, hands fisted in his blankets, “what I want and what I don’t will be none of anyone’s concern once I have departed. I can assure you, Mrs Amari, given the opportunity, you will never have to see me again.”

She let out a hiss of a sigh, exhaling through frustrated teeth, shoulders tense beneath her bodice and lace, eyes rolling towards the ceiling, jaw wired shut with tension before she settled her eye back on him like a force of nature, like a cargo train, an eight horse carriage, narrowed and filled with mirth.

“Forgive me my bluntness,” she hissed, every charade of pleasantry stripped back until only hostility was left, “but you will have to learn patience or you will not survive this,” the words were sharp, deliberate. “You will stay in this bed, you will be polite and kindly, you will recover from this illness, and you will be taken care of,” her snarl grew viperous, as if she could see it in his eyes that he couldn’t understand, had never been taught to understand, resentful that she had to explain.

“You have never taken care of anyone and you do not know what that means. That is the risk you pose, the mistake you made was in thinking that caring for no one else would result in no one caring for you.” She hissed at him, some sort of violence in her eye, like a knife pressed against his throat, “And now you are stuck with Jesse because he can’t help himself. And I just want you to know that if you cannot keep from treating him and this inn well, then I will not hesitate to make your life very difficult.” And all he wanted was to be away from here, to bail himself out of bed, teeth gritted in his mouth, heart in his throat, so full of fright and panic, not used to being threatened, knowing that he could do nothing about it.

She narrowed her eye at him, full of contempt, as though he was smaller than a speck. Then she shrugged and her gaze left him.

“But for the time being, Jesse will take care of you like his mother taught him and you will just have to endure it.”

And every part of him screamed to get out of bed, to pack his things, to walk if necessary, to feel any sort of distance, knowing that he could do with no more chains, so leaden already, that he was weak enough, corrupted enough. But instead, all he could do was stare down at his hands, too tired, too weak, all he could do was stare down at his sheets, his blankets, and try to come to terms with the fact that he was not going to come out of this unscathed, that there were already talons in him, that there would be no trains.

…

“You’ll get worse before you get better,” she’d said after a thorough examination, having taken his temperature and listened to his ragged breathing as he’d choked down coughs and lied in all his answers, his throat appraised for value between snarls and bad tempered commentary. There had been some part of him that wanted so badly to believe he could still hide this ugliness from her, that there was still a chance that he’d get free even after she’d so clearly condemned him, had chained him to this bed, handcuffed to every neighbouring wrist. So he’d made an imperfect coverup of his body just to comfort himself, a conspiracy of health for the benefit of one, unable to let it all down, not when she looked at him in that way that she did.

She had dusted her hands together when she was done, standing by the bed, looking down at him with such utter contempt, “you will experience no miracles, but laudanum will help you some. I’ll leave it with the boy.”

He’d scowled at her, but if he’d had sharp words, they were gone. He was empty of them, there were no easy answers, no escape routes, no pickable locks, no open windows, instead he’d just stayed in bed, pale and uneasy and hissing. He could only hope that she’d leave, that he wouldn’t have to maintain this vigilance, so much effort just to keep his head straight and his eyes open, so desperate to just let the weight be heavy, let it drag him down until he was no more.

McCree had come upstairs a few minutes later, dressed the same as he had been, rag over his shoulder, knocking politely every time he came to the door. When Hanzo had called him in he’d ambled around the room as though it was the bar, a place of business, every identical room along the hall a home to him, in and out a thousand times since childhood, comfortable with every floorboard, every pane of glass, every bedsheet, every glass of water.

And Hanzo had let it all happen, he let McCree run him a bath, watching from the doorway in his dressing gown, hold onto his own elbows, mind made slow and clumsy, watching McCree unbutton the cuff of his left sleeve to check the temperature of the water, holding back the fabric to keep it from getting wet, the veins of his wrist like rivers. He let his guard fall like a sheet around his ankles, letting it slip from his shoulders like a heavy weight, letting it out of him like a sigh. He could fight it no longer, left quiet and defeated, willing to leave it be, to lay down his defences.

He let his mind turn soft, docile in his indignity, knowing that no one else had seen him so unraveled, finding comfort in the way McCree smiled at him, smiled and told him he’d seen folks in far worse condition than him, that there was nothing special about him, just another body, just another animal.

When McCree told him that it was time to crawl in to the warm water, to wash the sweat from his skin, breathe in the steam, he’d pulled off his clothes without a word. He took down his hair and removed the rings from his fingers, unhooked the gems from his ears and left all his layers on the floor. He stripped himself down like a tree stripped of it’s bark, knowing full well that the naked body of a Shimada was a recognisable thing even without the precious stones, that the history he’d been born with was painted on his skin, down two of four limbs, colours that no one had seen in months, not since he and Genji had last bathed together, colours he’d vowed to keep hidden.

But McCree saw him, saw all the colours he had, the history, the legacy, the weight on his shoulders and just whistled though his teeth, folding a towel with only one of his sleeves rolled up.

“Thats some mighty impressive ink you got there, Mr Shimada,” was all he murmured.

Hanzo just slipped into the bath with a grimace, numb and tired, naked in so many ways, a kind of nakedness he had hardly felt in his life, bare and open, the steam already seeping into him, like water soaking into a rag, heavy with warmth, every foundation gone, every load-bearing wall knocked down. There was nothing to keep him from crumbling inwards, to keep him from leaning his head back on the rim of the bath and closing his eyes even with McCree right there, watching him come unspooled.

“It is a tradition in my family,” was all he could whisper as McCree moved around him, circling the bath like a shark, laughing all low and sweet as he did.

“You know what’s a tradition in my family?”

“Whats that, Mr McCree?”

“Trick knees.”

From the bath, Hanzo snorted, stripped of every inhibition, of everything that kept him from laughing, from showing the warm pleasure that spread through him, arms soaking in the water as McCree moved around the bathroom, idly tiding in that way that he did. And all he could do was listen and sink deeper into the hot water, in this bath where he could feel all the the sides, Genji silent in his ears, McCree neither a flame nor foe, just an innkeeper, just a man, taking quiet care.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling, deep in his bones, that he was safe, that he was in good company.

He was safe in the knowledge that the Shimada lineage did not pertain to whiskey, that the crimes he’d committed, the awful things he’d done didn’t relate at all to coffee beans in the far west, to the linen that made the tablecloths, the varnish that polished the wood, the bodies that made the dancers. There was so much of him that McCree wouldn’t ever need to know, would never go looking to know, so far outside of his area of expertise, just a country man, born so far from that Shimada empire.

He wouldn’t ever need to understand the history, the creatures that covered him, he would only see them for their ink, for the most rudimentary shapes and colours. And he would only see Hanzo for his shape as well, for how much coffee could be offered, food he might like to eat. He was made new and unshackled under only his eyes, naked of every ancestor, of every genetic prophecy, until he was so light he felt every atom float.

And it was so peaceful, in the bath, the smell of lavender and woodsmoke on the air, surrounded by a sweet companionship he’d never felt before, the companionship of a man who had seen it all, who had seen a hundred other bodies besides his, who ambled around his bathroom the same way as he walked from one end of the saloon to the other, serene and made of sunlight, an infectious sort of comfortable.

His eyes creaked open as he felt McCree bustle in and out, watching him through the open bathroom door, over the rim of the bath, watching him strip the bed and bundle the blankets in his arms, gazing at his bowed back, the buckle of his waistcoat catching the light, performing his chores around him, in spite of him, as though he was fully aware that he soothed every feeling of restlessness, lingered so that he could do just that.

“Do you not have a business to attend to, Mr McCree?” Hanzo found himself croaking from the bath, not even bothering to raise his head from the cool porcelain.

McCree laughed breathlessly as he yanked the sheets off the corners of his mattress, back turned to him.

“Nah, Hana’s downstairs. She’ll call me if she needs me.”

“I can’t imagine that happens very often.”

McCree grinned at him as he tossed the sheets into his hamper.

“Less and less each day.”

Hanzo sunk deeper into the bath.

“Be grateful she’s clever,” he whispered, voice hoarse, eyes drifting up to the ceiling, unfocused, “mine wasn’t.”

McCree came to stand over him, smiling down at him, a pillowcase in his hands. Hanzo was as naked as the day beneath him, lounging in the water, with his throat sore, his heart aching in the dull water, and McCree, the saint, exposed one forearm and nothing more. Nothing more.

“She is clever isn’t she,” McCree grinned at him, “I think so too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like, you remember being a kid, pretending to fall asleep on the couch just so your dad might carry you to bed? The point is that everyone wants to feel taken care of.
> 
> I leave you with this poem by Pat Schneider because I read it this morning and wept into my coffee cup:
> 
> It is a kind of love, is it not?  
> How the cup holds the tea,  
> How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,  
> How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes  
> Or toes. How soles of feet know  
> Where they’re supposed to be.  
> I’ve been thinking about the patience  
> Of ordinary things, how clothes  
> Wait respectfully in closets  
> And soap dries quietly in the dish  
> And towels drink the wet  
> From the skin of the back  
> And the lovely repetition of stairs.  
> And what is more generous than a window? 
> 
> Also, today's lyric is from Paul Simon's Run That Body Down


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me,” McCree looked back at him as he spoke, “were you here all night, Mr McCree?”
> 
> “Nah,” he answered, throwing a smile over his shoulder as he reached up to take the towel from the top of the bathroom door, “just checked up on you a few times was all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was sitting on the balcony yesterday, smoking a secret cigarette and listening to the birds, and it struck me that I'm doing this in reverse. 
> 
> Here in sunny Adelaide we are slipping back into spring like the winter was some sort of embarrassing teenage phase and things have finally righted themselves. Whereas, in this piece, its the winter that is arriving. Moreover, the winter is arriving in a place I have never been to. I am infinitely more qualified to describe the dry heat, the hot pavements, the glimmering pacific, the seasonal arrival of unfortunate tan lines. But I guess you don't have to be qualified for this, I guess thats the beauty of it. I'm not here to ferry factual information from one point to another, all I have to convey is how it feels, how it feels for the trees to be doing something ever so slightly different each time you wake up. 
> 
> Anyway, the wisteria is blooming.

_Been thinking you probably should stay_

The laudanum Amari had left with McCree was heavy. It was heavy like a warm cloth laid over every surface, turning the air in his lungs to molasses, his brain turned into an empty room, pushed down and down against his sheets until he could no longer raise his head and the ceiling spun above him, clockwise and lazy, unable to put a sentence together, unable to think. But at least it stopped the coughing.

McCree had told him that he’d be back once the dinner rush was finished, to watch over him like Amari had told him to do, to watch him get worse before he got better. In response he’d curled up in his borrowed bed, in the fresh linens, cool against his hot skin, watching the shadows move across the wallpaper. Something in him let his grip on time go loose, every checklist going unchecked, every failsafe slipping away like sand pulled away by wind, disappearing into the air until he was no more a cautious man, no longer capable of prudence, no vigilance left. He was left empty, left hollow, a great echoing chamber with all the windows left open, breathing all slow, mind like soup, no thoughts for pennies.

The hours McCree must have been gone were a haze, somewhere between a decade and a blink, breathing in the lavender by his bed, eyelids heavy, stupid out of his mind with his head down on his pillow, unable to rise. And Genji stayed quiet, stayed still as he drifted, a quiet voice just out of his periphery whispering “I can’t believe you,” as he circled.

“After all that fighting and here you are,” his voice got clearer with every inch he fell into delirium, as though he was really there, speaking to him, “barely alive in some hotel room, just because a man looks at you like you’re made of silver.”

The next time he resurfaced McCree was back and it was so dark.

Outside the night was quiet and inside the only light was a candle flickering on his bedside table. Beyond that was McCree, beautiful McCree, half shrouded in darkness, his fingers knitted across his stomach, sitting on a dining chair beside the bed, watching over him like a mountain. He was so still, so patient, as though he was some geographical structure, carved out of the earth a billion years before to watch over him in his sickbed. Hanzo gazed at him, hypnotised by the shine of the ring of gold in his ear, the silhouette of his shoulders, his jaw, the darkness that obscured his eyes, lulled by him, by the flow and flicker of the candle, the light that didn’t quite reach his face.

Hanzo found himself reaching for him, hand pulling out of his sheets in the dim light, reaching for his shirt in the golden light, molten and the colour of honey and tangerines, warm, he looked so warm. But before he could touch him, hold him, find something and keep it, somewhere beyond the candlelight, the heaviest voice came to him, soft and steady and warm, like burning herbs, like the hearth of a house, a great old god talking just to him.

“Be careful of the flame, sugar,” it murmured, and nothing more.

_Be careful of the flame._

_Sugar._

He receded back into the blankets like a slow tide and slept to the picture it painted, dreamt of sugarcane fields alight on the horizon. Burning.

…

He dreamt of a thousand things, falling through trapdoors from one world to the next.

He dreamt of Genji looking up at him, a child with rosy cheeks and a missing tooth. He dreamt of coyotes in the dark desert, red fur and golden eyes, teeth for finding throats, blood dripping from raggedy fur. He dreamt of dark navy velvet and cut glass, glimmering like stars in the nights sky, he dreamt of the barrel of an old pistol, of Genji’s katana, a katana generations old.

He dreamt of Hana and McCree, dreamt of Genji, dreamt of their father with long claws coming down from his hands, not quite an animal, not quite a man, dreamt of his own body torn and severed. He dreamt of blood and dreamt of beauty, he dreamt of salvation and destitution, dreamt of neither and both all at once, all of it strange, a blur of dark colours, of faces that he knew broken and askew, looking back at him all wrong.

He dreamt of soft footfalls, of McCree moving around his room, standing by his desk in the pale moonlight, leafing through letters with his fingertips, something unseen in his expression, something so serious, somber and still, so distant from the orange glow of the sunrise, the burning embers of a fire, blue in the frame of the window, against the blackness outside.

He dreamt of Genji by his bed, looking down on him, luminescent in the darkness, the handle of his katana held in both hands, the blade pointed downwards, blood dripping down his cheeks, his neck, his eyes like tar pits. He dreamt of Genji looking away from him, all slow and languid, looking down to where the katana ended, down to where a figure slept heavy on the floor.

The blade hovered above McCree’s throat, between his collarbones, his white shirt part-ways unbuttoned as he slept, his waistcoat folded neatly beneath his head, sleeping so heavily, not knowing that he should have kept his eyes open. Defenceless. He looked as though he could sense no danger, could feel no fear of fanged creatures waiting for the guard to drop, for the rope pulled taunt enough to snap, for young men with swords and heartless eyes, making wordless threats about valuable things, things that had posed no threat, with hands that only gave.

Hanzo looked up, up to Genji and his bottomless eyes, blood dripping from his chin, his hair cut and clothes ripped, a vision of every violent part of him, of every part of him so beyond repair.

“Don’t,” he whispered as Genji stared blankly back at him, so close to letting the blade plunge down, to letting the blood spill, a kind of punishment, a kind of revenge. “Not here, not to him,”

Genji cocked his head, eyelashes fluttering at him as if to ask why not, what the problem could possibly be.

“Brother,” he said, voice slow, cut lips moving as though the words were glass coming out of him, “He is sleeping. He is dangerous. I’m helping.”

“No,” he breathed, “he is good, he is not like us.”

Genji’s black eyes narrowed, lip beginning to curl down at him, so unlike himself, so strange and twisted, sneering at him as the smell of singed sugarcane began to waft through the air.

“You have forgotten many things, Hanzo,” his whispered, mouth wrung into a snarl, “things that you will be made to remember.”

And with that Genji raised the katana high and plunged it down into McCree’s chest.

...

He awoke with a gasp, shaking and quivering as hands gripped him, holding onto his shoulders, holding him as he shook and convulsed and panic burst through him like fireworks going off against his skin, his eyes forced open with every fright he’d experience during the night ricocheting through him all at once.

“It’s okay, Mr Shimada, it’s me,” McCree told him from above, his eyes so clear, his golden coyote eyes, eyebrows together in concern, “it was just a bad dream, it’s over, Mr Shimada.”

Hanzo stared up at him with eyes wide, dragging in ragged, painful breaths, hands knotted in his white shirt, holding onto each other’s arms as though they were passengers on the deck of a ship in a rolling storm, trying to keep one another from toppling over the edge and down into the deep, dark ocean below.

“Mr McCree?”

McCree smiled as stared back at him, stricken.

“There we go,” he murmured, “welcome back.”

McCree released him, stranding straight over the bed as Hanzo blinked at him, rapidly as though he was trying to clear his eyes, trying to figure out if he too was an apparition, just beginning his career in haunting him. But he was the same as he’d been the day before and the day before that, the same as he was everyday, his shirt white and unstained, unharmed, living and breathing unencumbered. He’d been so certain, so certain of what Genji had done to him, his sword through his chest, his body split, all the goodness drained out of him until there was no more.

But he was fine, moving away from his bedside to throw the curtains open, to let the morning light come streaming in onto the floor, every day beginning anew, every morning arriving as if there had never been one to come before it. And McCree met each one like an old friend back from the dead, as though he’d missed it during the night. He marched around the room as Hanzo hauled himself up from his sheets with his heart still pounding, coughing into his fist, feeling all bedraggled, all rough around the edges, frayed and weary.

And he knew that he’d asked McCree to wake him for breakfast, but as soon as the panic left him it was replaced with a fatigue like concrete, all his fear let go in a single breath as though he was a tsunami receding back into the sea, barely managing to seat himself upright, head back on the headboard, eyes closed.

“Here.”

When his eyes slid open to see McCree standing by his bed in the sun, holding a mug out to him, always with something to offer, something to give, “I brought coffee.” Hanzo took it with a kind of reverie, as though it were a rosary, and held it to his chest like a prayer, feeling as though he’d aged exhausted decades during the night, but that a cup of coffee might give him some of his years back.

“Mr McCree,” he breathed, “you are a _saint_.”

“It ain’t nothing, Mr Shimada.”

Hanzo let his eyes wander around after him as McCree moved around, watching him lean over the desk to yank the window open, to let the crisp fall air into his stuffy room, where the day was already spinning outside, was already midway though a bustle he couldn’t prevent, couldn’t convince to wake later. And he wondered, distantly, if he would have been as comfortable milling around wherever it was McCree slept, if he would have felt as much ease as McCree did, whistling as he tied back the curtains.

He knew that when McCree had been sleeping beside the bed, Hanzo had let an apparition thrust a sword through his rib cage, he wasn’t sure that he could be trusted, not with the devils that roosted always on his shoulders. But with McCree standing by his desk, bathed in the sunlight of a morning that he all but encouraged, nothing serious about him, it made him wonder just how much of him had been a dream, brought on by an uncrushable infatuation and the opiate haze.

“Tell me,” McCree looked back at him as he spoke, “were you here all night, Mr McCree?”

“Nah,” he answered, throwing a smile over his shoulder as he reached up to take the towel from the top of the bathroom door, “just checked up on you a few times was all.”

The wolf was prowling against his chest just watching him, a fanged creature even when he was sickly, still coming off the laudanum, a sort of gnawing hunger always in his belly, always waiting for the turned back, for the slip of attention, for any opportunity to reach over and touch him, to feel the warmth that radiated off his skin. He was still thinking about being held, that strange feeling, being a fanged creature and all, the way McCree had rushed forward to keep him from the floor, the way his arms had enveloped him and heat had flushed through him like a fever, like nothing he’d ever felt before.

But he kept his hands to himself, eyes flickering away, knowing that there were things that weren’t his to hold.

“My apologies,” he said instead, coffee nestled in his lap, McCree tiding around him, “you must not have slept well.”

McCree grinned at him as he tossed some clothes into the hamper.

“This building’s got a lot of ghosts, Mr Shimada,” he answered, his hands coming to rest on the back of the dining chair by the bed, leaning forward with a wink, “I’ll be damned if I let it have one more.”

And Hanzo couldn’t understand how this situation had gotten so out of hand, how he’d gotten so comfortable, no fangs, no nails, feeling as harmless as he was believed to be, glowing every time McCree looked at him, but there was something in McCree’s eyes, something in the way he lingered, standing by his bed even with no services left to perform that made him feel as though McCree too was pleased to see that he hadn’t died during the night, enjoyed his company. _He has come to care for you,_ a voice whispered in his ear. Minor miracles occurring in time, two left feet for years and years and suddenly he found himself dancing, swaying in time with the music, dancing around the room together, him and McCree.

“Set yourself at ease, Mr McCree, I am fatigued, not near death.”

McCree laughed, a sound like fresh wood chips, sweet cedar, beautiful and wonderful and honest, Hanzo burning like an olive bush from bed.

“Well, I’m relieved,” he said, eyes like the sun, looking at him as though he was made of silver, “though I’m not sure nauseous is an improvement on yesterday, Mr Shimada.” He rocked on his heels as he spoke, as if he wasn’t used to standing still, to his hands being idle in front of him, asking his body to make exceptions, for the sake of a little company, a little conversation with the morning sun spilled out onto the floorboards.

And Hanzo let the embers take hold in his belly the same, almost feeding the fire, so delighted to make him laugh, to have his company enjoyed, knowing that he was the clever one, that clever had hardly ever been charming but something in him kept McCree by his bed.

“I can tell you, Mr McCree, very little of my condition if an improvement on yesterday.”

McCree chuckled at the sentiment, his mouth curling to respond, but before he could, he was cut off by a knock. Both of them stilled at the sound, turning to look at the door. Some horrified part of him immediately assumed that it was Amari, back to torment him further, find other ways of working him into a stupor like a tiger with its claws filed, but instead Hana popped her head around the door and he was immediately beset with relief.

“Jesse,” her voice was small, but determined at it always was, her eyes only on McCree, “Jack’s here to see you.”

Hanzo watched with quiet amusement as McCree shoulders slackened as he looked back towards the bed and he let out a groan, hands still holding onto the back of the dining chair, lip curled in annoyance, staring forward out the window as though he was imagining jumping out of it and climbing down the siding.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he muttered, his voice mostly mirth, “just tell him I’m busy or something.”

“Thats what I told him last time,” her voice came out a hiss, as though frustrated by his reluctance, as though it was him that was the child in their relationship, “He knows you’re avoiding him.” McCree grit his teeth, jaw tense. He remembered the way McCree’s voice had sharpened the morning before, remembered the way he’d stood, as though Hanzo could at least have been wrestled back to bed if it came to that. But now, he stood like a man faced with the inevitable, but not one he’d been expecting so soon.

Hanzo smiled grimly at him from bed, and McCree let him, before he sighed and hung his head down in defeat, a showman at the best of times.

“Fine,” McCree spat out eventually, “give me a minute, I’ll go.”

“Good,” Hana hissed, snarling into the back of his head. “God, you’re such a baby sometimes,” she muttered as she closed the door behind her. McCree looked down at him with a well mannered sneer and a deep sigh. Hanzo gazed back at him with an impossible fondness lodged in his chest like old shrapnel long healed in, thinking that somehow, McCree made even a scowl look handsome.

…

A blond man waved his arms about as he spoke, the harshness in his tone clear even from the window of Hanzo’s bedroom, McCree listening with his shoulders straight, arms crossed across his chest, standing like a man even as the blond man ranted at him as though he was a child caught holding a candle against a curtain. Hanzo gazed down at them, leaning on his cane in his dressing gown, and watched McCree’s expression darken and darken as the man hissed and squawked at him on the quiet street.

He watched McCree say something offhand, which seemed to only infuriate the man further, McCree not rising to the fight as his hand gestures grew more and more erratic, lecturing him right there in front of his inn. And even looking down at him, observing him so, analysing the way he held himself, the way his expressions changed, the way he shifted, everything that made him himself, Hanzo still couldn’t be certain what he was feeling, except that it was a darkness. He just stood there and felt something dark.

And Hanzo could only look down at him and felt something dark too.

From somewhere outside his darkness, his weary head and sore limbs, someone knocked again on his bedroom door.

“Mr Shimada, I’ve got your breakfast.”

He should have known that McCree would make arrangements for him, no matter his appointments with reprimand, busy being spoken to as though he was some school child covered in chalk dust.

“Come in, Miss Song.”

She pushed open the door at once, carrying a tray of the same oats as the day before, the air filling with the smell of apples and cinnamon, food that they seemed to believe would make him strong, would settle his stomach and heal his ails, as their mothers had believed for them and as they would believe for their children, hereditary remedies, as soft and generous as offerings could be. Giving what they had been first taught was good to give.

“Would you like it on the desk or in bed?”

All her questions were simple, light, serving only one purpose at a time, dressed in her skirts and her good white blouse, shooting him a tight smile as he looked back at her with his hair braided over his shoulder and his pallor still sickly.

“The desk. Please, Miss Song.”

She set it down beside him and they both stopped to peer down at the blond man and McCree, still all snarls out there on the street, McCree standing like a boulder in a river, tall and square, as though he could have stood there for years and years, as though he was well acquainted with the duress, fully aware that he would not be moved any time soon. And the blond man played river, all movement, furious and rampant.

“Tell me, miss, who is that man down there?”

Beside him Hana set out the tea that didn’t taste like home.

“He’s our town sheriff, Jack Morrison.”

He looked down at her.

“And what are they arguing about do you think?”

“Don’t know,” she answered, “they won’t tell me. They keep secrets from me sometimes.” She told him as a kind of pointed revenge, taking vengeance on their secret keeping by keeping none of her own, answering every question he asked with bitter honesty.

He hummed in response, looking back down at them, keeping their secrets out on the street, as though if spoken inside they’d be trapped behind the bar and under the gin glasses forever like ghosts.

“You and McCree are fast friends, aren’t you?”

He looked back down at her as she poured the tea, keeping her hands busy and her eyes down.

“You could say that,” he said in response, fighting to keep the smile from his lips. He might have been mistaken, but he could have sworn there was almost an edge of jealousy in her voice. He supposed that before McCree had been forced to tend to him, they might have had breakfast together, down in the warm backstage of the inn, perhaps she was more used to being doted on, being the youngest, and fairest, and nicest after all.

And he was certain that the notion would come to horrify him in time, but for a moment, he found it tremendously amusing.

…

And he learnt a rhythm too to the illness, or at least to the rhythm that McCree made around him.

Such a fine dancer he was, throwing his curtains open to meet the morning as though he’d been born in the halfway point between a song bird and a farm dog, always ready for the day at least an hour before it arrived, overjoyed when it came. Hanzo watched from bed morning after morning, and couldn’t even summon panic, hadn’t managed it for for days on end, no fear, no caution left in him, no trepidation, no control. Just a man in a bed, an insect in a honey trap, sinking slowly down with heavy eyelids and aching limbs, every weight, every responsibility lifted from his shoulders until his only obligation was to continue to breath.

He’d been sleeping heavy even without the laudanum, as though his fatigue had been building up for months and months and had plunged down on him all at once, as though in fear of never stopping to pause ever again, his body had decided to shackle him to a bed in the hope that he’d learn to go slowly. But as the days slipped by, he began to feel better, stronger, his lungs began to clear and his mind began to sharpen, still slow but pained less by it, comfortable in the descent, offering dry remarks just to watch McCree chuckle. He was fed on a diet of oats and roast beef, Hana’s mother’s soup, tea that didn’t taste like home, a small glass of McCree’s favourite brandy before bed each night, and the sharp lavender on his bedside.

Genji still came to him in dreams, sometimes bloody and sometimes pristine, sometimes he came smiling, sometimes with his sword, wearing a half mask of navy velvet and cut glass that glimmered like stars, whispering about forgotten things, about all the things that were hidden even here, McCree and his secrets, the dancer, the wolf and the coyote, the flame and the songbird.

“Do you think it is a coincidence?” He whispered in the darkness, “do you think that the universe has taken chances with you?”

But there was nothing he could say, nothing that could convince the empty belly that it was for the best that he starve, that the animal go hungry, watching him in the mirror as he put on his earrings, teardrop jades, to match his good green cravat and the gold of his waistcoat buttons, his well-polished shoes. Hanzo was haunted and Genji was stuck haunting him and neither could be rid of the other, Genji’s eyes narrow and gaze empty, an apparition still bloody, still angry, watching him get dressed with a sneer.

“Do you think he thinks you’re beautiful, brother?” He asked, voice vile, “Do you think any of this matters to him?”

“No,” he answered, because he didn’t think that it did, in his heart of hearts, “but it matters to me.”

When he descended the stairs for dinner it didn’t even occur to him that his breathing was easier now, that it had been more than a week since the panic had gripped him and McCree had caught him, that he’d been doted on and his head no longer swam, his need for attention no longer a matter of physical health but only of pleasure, of welcome company. But he went to great lengths not to see it, to hear only the sound of his own shoes on the wooden floor, the smell of warmth on the air, refusing to feel anything but the slow pleasure that unfurled in his chest knowing that the short term was good and could fool him if he wanted it to.

And dinner was a reliable affair, as it always was, consistent, seated at the same table as always, by the window in the parlour, to watch the other travellers, the revolving cast members, different faces since he’d first arrived, different stories on their shoulders, different aims, goals twisting through their smiles, each a thousand salvations away from home. He watched them over his dinner, the boy arriving with his meal and some wine to tide the time, biscuits and gravy, fried mushrooms and slow cooked lamb, green beans and mashed potatoes, all of it warm and staying warm in him as he listened to the conversations going on around him.

After dinner, as the other guests ambled up the stairs to their rooms or out into the night, Hanzo pushed the doors open to the saloon to find something to drink, some place to roost.

Instead he pushed the doors open and inside the saloon silent and dark. The air was still and empty of movement, no stage-play tonight. Usually at this time of the evening, the saloon would be in full swing, the stage set and already half dismantled, the town coming together as though they hadn’t seen each other in weeks, socialising off lost earnings, off the comings and goings, the facts and figures of a town so often in motion, never static, never still.

But now it was silent, dim and quiet as he stepped through the door. It was almost eerie, the smell of tobacco smoke sweet on the air, so different from the chatter of the parlour, the silence so strange in a space so consistently populated, so consistently thrumming, filled with laughter and sloshing drinks. He rounded the bar slowly, carefully, feeling almost out of place, as though he shouldn’t be there, as though it was a private space with the lights out, empty of patrons, alibied by no one.

He found McCree sitting alone at one of the tables and the sight was striking, his apron hung over the back of his chair, a bottle of whiskey on the table, hair down and tucked behind his ears, an ashtray set to the side for his cigar, lit by the light of an oil lamp, amber in the deserted saloon. McCree looked up at him, and Hanzo realised that he’d never seen McCree without his apron on before, stripped of his servitude, not an innkeeper but a man, owing him nothing, offering nothing Hanzo could buy.

And suddenly, he didn’t know where to put his hands.

“Sorry, Mr Shiamda,” McCree smiled at him, “no drinking on Sundays.”

Hanzo blinked at him, creeping forward into the lamp light, standing a few feet away with his hand on the bar as though he was waiting for something, was waiting for the world to reset itself, for McCree to appear, in his apron, with his servitude intact and the dynamic back to maintaining the facade of the familiar. The oil lamp flickered and sent shadows dancing across McCree’s features.

“You are a man of faith, Mr McCree?”

McCree smiled at him, soft and slow.

“Not particularly,” he drawled, “but I’m not gonna object to night off every once in a while either.”

Hanzo startled, eyebrows coming together in surprise, realising like a sharp hiss that perhaps what McCree might want a night off from was him. Was from keeping him company, tending to him day and night, day and night always at his service, at his beck and call. Hanzo was a guest after all, he could see it now, a mouth to be fed, a body needing warmth, clean clothes, clean linens, he was work and McCree wasn’t wearing his apron, there was no more protocol, no better questions.

“Oh,” he found himself stuttering out, tense at the periphery of the light, “well, I should leave you to it then.”

McCree blinked at him in surprise.

“Not at all,” he said, his voice so earnest, eyes so clear, “please, have a drink with me, Mr Shimada.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I insist. Hana’s out tonight, you would be doing her a service to supervise me.”

And Hanzo couldn’t help but let out a snort at the statement, certain that if McCree was a rock, then he was a tree branch, unable to keep from rushing downstream at the barest encouragement, entering the flickering lamplight, half hoping that it would catch the shine of his earrings, brighten the gold of his buttons, that McCree would see him glimmering and understand that he had once been a glamorous thing, that he’d had riches once.

But McCree just smiled at him as though he could see no gems, hardly noticed the gold, saw past them, beyond them, saw him only as himself, unshackled, justified by no histories. But despite seeing him so unadorned, he still managed to be pleased to see him, still preferred to drink with him than drink without. Despite all the stature McCree took from him, he was still looked at as though the room was better off with him in it, as though he was made of silver, watching the light. 

He took a seat across from him, just the lamplight to keep them seen, McCree already pouring him some whiskey, sharing whatever he had to share, left unsupervised by the child under his care. Hanzo leaned back in his chair as he watched and took to wondering. And he started on a question before he'd even thought to speak, inquiring on topics as if just to have something to say.

“If you do not mind my asking, Mr McCree” McCree peered at him as he spoke, mid way through relighting his cigarillo, “but what is you relation to Miss Song?” He'd already supposed a hundred times that Hana could have been McCree’s daughter, but only if he’d been a scamp aged fifteen, perhaps a cousin or step-sister, family friend or orphan taken in. She could have been the child of McCree’s missing or perhaps deceased wife, perhaps adopted, perhaps she’d just been working at the inn so long McCree had started to think of her as his own. But it was nice to wonder, nice to get answers, nice to see the corner of McCree's mouth quirk upwards as he listened to the question. 

Hanzo watched him strike a match against the wood of the table as he mused over how to respond, leaning back in his chair and taking a drag before he took it from his lips to speak.

“Aw, well, her ma was friends with mine when we were little, well, when she was little,” he blew smoke out the corner of his mouth, eyes thoughtful, “so when her pa died, my mama offered her a job bussing tables and such, just for a little while, to help out her ma and all. But she’s got a real mean streak with the cards and she’s a whip with customers, so ma figured she could stay on a little longer, and so on and so on,” McCree rolled his hand though the air as he spoke, “runs the place better than I do nowadays.” McCree smiled at him, “Why do you ask?”

Hanzo shrugged, shifting his gaze back towards the whiskey swirling in his glass.

“Simply curious, you do not look alike.”

McCree laughed.

“I’ll tell her you said, she’ll be pleased,” he chuckled and Hanzo found himself laughing too, felt the tension seeping out of his shoulders as he sat back. Looking at McCree and realising that McCree the man was no different to McCree the innkeeper, affable, friendly, a distant campfire on a cold night, golden embers in his eyes, haloed by the light, aglow in the evening, in this space that had once bustled, and was now slow with their slowness, pleased by their pleasure.

They spoke easily, spoke all leisurely and sweet the way they always did, sinking slowly into their seats and getting to be older with every glass. Hanzo’s feet were up on a nearby chair after a couple of hours, forgetting his manners, forgetting his gems, as though the moment that McCree took his history from his view, he forgot it was there, sitting bare at the table. And in response, McCree loosened his tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat, laughing a bit lower than usual, grinning at him over the lamplight, all canines and cheekbones.

Hanzo watched as he leant over the table to pour more whiskey into each of their glasses, cigar between two fingers, sharing the bottle as though they were prospectors on the trail on the verge of finding gold.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, Mr Shimada,” he said, sitting back in his chair with his glass, shoulders shifting as he got comfortable, “why is it that you are making west?”

And in hindsight, he should have seen the question coming, should have been expecting it, his stay at the inn stretching into the weeks, and he was sure McCree would have noticed, his eyes quick and his ears keen, noticing how still he’d become, how unrushed, as though he had nowhere to be, as though no one was expecting him.

But the question still took him out at the knees, left him opening and closing his mouth, grasping for words, reaching for them even as they scattered and disappeared, stuttering for some excuse, some reason, a test he was so unprepared to cheat, so much so that it left him only with his own truths, bare at the bottom of the barrel.

“Oh, I…” he tried, pulling at strings, at any other answer he might give. None came to him. “I am looking to start anew.” McCree raised an eyebrow at him, gazing at him from across the table, and Hanzo sighed, shoulders going slack. “My brother died shortly before I left the east.”

McCree’s face fell.

“Oh. Oh, Mr Shimada, I’m so sorry,” and to his credit, there was earnest sorrow in his voice, sorry for him, that he and the things he’d loved had come to harm, unknowing that it had all come to pass by his own hand, smearing blood around his whiskey glass as he gazed down at it, knowing that it made him only worse to fail to speak of it, of how he’d cut up his baby brother as though he’d been a bird, left him to bleed out on the floor. In the background, Genji stayed silent, skulking behind the bar, watching, listening to all he failed to say.

McCree’s soft voice came to him from beyond the din of his grief.

“Younger or older?”

“Younger,” and he was so young, had always been so young.

“Ah,” McCree answered, something knowledgable in his tone, “younger is worse.”

Hanzo glanced up at him, and McCree’s halo was no less golden for his mourning, for the mourning that was louder in some moments than in others, realising slowly that he’d never said it out loud before, that Genji was dead, his brother, his beautiful little brother. He’d never spoken of Genji’s death in any shape or form to anyone but himself and the apparitions that lived within him, realising that McCree was an exception, that he was exceptional. 

“Do you have siblings, Mr McCree?”

Across from him, McCree shook his head.

“Me? No,” there was a pause, mouth open as though he’d planned to continue, as though he was considering something, the daring diversion from the script, eyes slipping away. “But sometimes I have bad dreams about all the bad things that might happen to my Hana, she’s such a pretty thing.” His gaze was vacant, down on the table, both of them dancing within their careful sorrows, but dancing still, even if it had grown slow, “I sometimes worry about the fella she might choose, if he’ll be good to her.”

Hanzo swirled the whiskey around, the blood gone again from his hands, Genji gone from the bar.

“I used to worry that my brother might never take a wife,” he whispered, long given in, letting out the smallest smile he had, “I think I was just worried no one would take care of him if I wasn’t there.”

They spoke for a long time after that, long after all shuffling from upstairs had gone quiet, the bottle emptied, offering each other only their most human secrets, their softest woes, gentle in the glow of the lamplight, dancing for hours around the bar, among the liquor bottles and polished wood, the card table, the booths, the old piano and the evening hush, until he hardly had the energy to keep his eyes open, so unburdened, so bare.

But eventually, McCree smiled at him, kindly, as though he could tell, and told him that it was probably time to turn in. He’d nodded, rubbing his eyes, able to exhale only heavy breaths, barely managing to stumble to his feet, understanding that there was surely gravity to this situation, to what he had said, but for a time, he just couldn’t feel it.

Just as he was ascending the stairs, McCree stopped him, hand on the banister, looking up at him.

“Mr Shimada?”

Hanzo looked down at him, on the lock of hair loose from it’s tie, hanging against his cheek, his coyote eyes clear and honest, as though he had been crafted from the desert, had been born out of the sands and shrub lands, born under the bright day, carrying the sun inside of him always.

“Mr McCree?”

“If you are making west to start anew and you’re in no hurry,” he spoke with his eyebrows pressed together, “why don’t you wait out the winter here with us, at the inn, start anew in the spring.” Hanzo stared down at him. “It’d be such a pleasure to have you.” And strangely, Hanzo believed him, believed that he thought it would be a pleasure to have him, that it would surely be more comfortable at the inn than on the road, camping out in the cold.

“Just do it, Hanzo,” Genji’s voice came from somewhere distant, sounding defeated, exhausted by it all, “what more harm could it do.”

“Very well,” Hanzo found himself murmuring in a hum, watching McCree’s smile widen. “Goodnight, Mr McCree, I will see you in the morning,” he turned back towards the stairs, towards Genji sitting at the top of them, looking down at him.

“The same to you, Mr Shimada. Till the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's lyric is from All Shades of Blue by Gregory Alan Isakov, which is a song I shamefully love. Some times its good to be soft hearted, sometimes it results in a love of nostalgic little folk songs. Pros and cons I suppose.
> 
> Also, please do not judge me for my secret cigarette, I am just a small creature and the world is very chaotic. I engage my vices only one at a time and only very infrequently, this will be a secret among us too.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought you said you were a bookkeeper,” she said, voice low, almost suspicious. 
> 
> He looked back at her as he held the door open for her. 
> 
> “Let this be a lesson then, Miss Song” he answered, keeping his voice even, “few men consign all their skills to just their profession” 
> 
> “It is no matter,” she said dismissively as she slipped by him, into the small room they’d uncovered, “you could be a bank robber, but I wouldn’t turn you in, Mr Shimada.” She was close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live in Adelaide, just under fifteen hundred kilometres from my hometown, fourteen hours by car, two days drive at least. All my friendships here aren't older than a few months, still fluttery, joyful but distant. 
> 
> Last night I dreamt that my mum was sitting on my couch, I dreamt that she touched my hair and allowed me to crawl under her arm, held again like I was small. So desperate for comfort that I've started to dream of it, starving of closeness, desperate for easement applied with palms and the warmth of another person. I come from a family that has always offered hands to problems, bodies to tears, hair tucked behind ears, arms around tummies, every idle moment occupied by touches, a family of women, generations of them with open arms. 
> 
> I miss it so badly it makes me ache.

_I wanted to remain there, a voyeur, a stranger_   
_Below you in the night air, waiting to be changed_

The winter came like a storm front, rolling in across the planes, and around him, the townsfolk took their turns squinting up at the sky and kicking at the dust. They muttered under their breaths and insulated chicken coops, asked grandmothers’ progress on this season’s knitwear and paid children to go scurrying up and down chimneys after months of disuse.

The inn changed around him like leaves going golden, the summer curtains swapped for heavier cottons, the beds layered with blankets, laundry lines strung up on the back porch and the kitchen flushed with warmth. McCree spent a week marching up and down the upstairs hall with his arms always full of spare linens to be laundered and pressed before they got tucked away for the spring, painting windows shut to keep the draft out and singing folk songs as he went up and down the stairs with pots of paint and oil for the oil lamps.

And Hanzo was allowed to stay.

He was told of no conditions, but he knew they were there, lines he was not allowed to cross, eyes always watching him, waiting for him to prove himself untrustworthy, to be the devil he knew and they suspected. Their eyes stayed on him as the winter curled its talons around the town, looking at him as though they couldn’t be sure that they wanted their resources spared on a man like him, a rich traveller who never spoke of his intentions. And yet, he could provide no catharsis; there was nothing he could offer that would validate their fears, made quiet and docile by the winter, by sweet companionship and sleep, a fanged creature with no use for them.

And already, those with eyes less keen were beginning to forget that he hadn’t always been there, sitting in the corner of the saloon after dinner, walking down the main street in the afternoon, sitting on the porch with McCree in the morning. He was becoming regular, daily, barely even interesting, as expected as the winter had been before it had come.

Each evening a fire was lit in his room, each morning McCree cut the wood out in the yard, stacked high by the stables as the horses watched him with blankets over their backs; he was kept fed, kept warm, and kept company. And it was good, the sort of good that he could feel growing between his ribs, a kind of contentment. He took to reading, book after book, anything he could get his hands on, just to occupy himself while he learned what it was to be idle.

He wrote letters to Genji, every evening after he wound his grandfather’s watch and sharpened his daggers, wrote letters about McCree, about Hana, about the town, the funny little comings and goings. He wrote most about the way the winter was different here, not colder, but deeper, the change more detailed, not just a scarf but the stitches, the hands that stitched. Or perhaps now, he was simply paying attention. He wrote to Genji like the letters might one day be received, like they might be sent, as though where Genji now was there might be a mailbox, an address where he might be waiting, waiting to hear all these ramblings, interested in this small kernel of warmth he found himself fostering.

Meanwhile, the Genji that stayed with him and haunted him lay on his bed and called him a fool, a cowardly one at that, deluded and doomed, setting fire to anything he could hold and letting it burn.

And he too began to forget, began to forget that he’d had other destinations in mind, that he hadn’t simply found himself here, that there were reasons he’d left the east, vowed to keep moving, good reasons, deadly reasons. It was as if he’d waited out his own restlessness, like a dog too tired to keep barking at the same door that won’t open, the itch faded and then it was gone. He lay awake at night attempting to induce it, eyes closed, forcing himself to think of it, of the hunt still afoot no matter how safe these walls made him feel, and yet he could summon no panic, no remorse.

He’d seen a thousand times the punishment, of young men that abandoned their posts, tracked from one side of the country to the other and further, he’d seen the daggers dragged against their skin, heard their screams, seen them with their thumbs and fingers broken, tied to chairs with their snarls made bloody, fading strength as they’d watched him stand in the corner and do nothing to save them. And still, still he couldn’t find the strength to walk down the stairs, thank McCree for his service, and get on the soonest train going anywhere.

“And you know he’d give you up in a heartbeat,” Genji whispered, “if he knew what you’ve done.”

“I know,” he whispered back, staring up at his ceiling in the darkness, “I know.” He would have done as well, if he’d been in McCree’s position, McCree who’d never asked for this.

But still he couldn’t help the warm contentment that washed over him with every moment of companionship, he couldn’t help the wolf that lurked within him still, that saw in McCree a beautiful den for sleeping in, in the flame that kept him warm long after his gaze had turned away. McCree sang to something weak inside of him, something that he hadn’t known was there, that longed to be sung to, to be looked at the way McCree looked at him, as though he was always pleased to see him, glad he was there, accompanying each other.

And he couldn’t help but smile when he was smiled at, but look back with that same vague affection; the two of them sharing their time together as though they were the only two people in town. They watched as the winter set in from their paired chairs as though they were monarchs overseeing a kingdom from a balcony, as though they’d been friends for decades, just been waiting to run into each other.

Even Hana had begun to ask him where McCree was when she couldn’t find him, as though he would be keeping tabs, sitting on the veranda with a book in the last of the afternoon light, looking up as Hana came to stand beside him, wiping her hands down with a rag, her apron covered in flour, jam smeared across her cheek. Hanzo gazed at her as she asked her question, one knee folded over the other, enjoying the sense of fondness that he found in his chest more and more often, a charming girl, blessed with an honest ferocity that he’d always had to fake.

“Mrs Amari has commandeered him,” he answered, voice level, eyes returning to his book, “shelves must put up in the shop.”

“Oh,” she sounded stressed, hands on her hips and looking out into the street as though she might see him coming back, before she looked back at Hanzo with a squint, “How strong are you?”

His gaze shot up. He stared at her, and she stared back, holding her nerve, sticking to her question, refusing to elaborate as she chewed on her own bottom lip, as though she knew well desperate times she was in and the desperate measures she was willing to employ.

“Relatively,” he answered slowly, carefully, easing only one ankle into the great swell as it threatened to drag him in. Beside him, Hana sucked in a breath as though bottling her courage to spit out whatever it was she needed to say.

“Mr Shimada,” she said, “I need a favour.”

…

The door was thick, made of strong oak, down a narrow corridor just off from the kitchen, in the sweet smelling backstage of the saloon, the air still filled with whatever Hana had been baking. Together they stood in front of the door and considered it, its breadth, the fast lock, Hana jittery beside him, all but vibrating like a wind-up toy about to chatter itself off a table, Hanzo half disbelieving of what he was hearing.

“Just to clarify, Miss Song,” he started slowly, “you want me to beat down this door… but in such a way that we may put it back on its hinges and replace the lock before Mr McCree, a friend of us both, ever finds out?”

“Yes,” Hana spoke tensely, as though she was fully aware of how ridiculous it sounded, but willing to take the shot anyway, “I want you to beat down this door, but in such a way that Jesse never finds out that either of us were ever here, he can never find out.”

“But why, Miss Song? What is in there that you so desperately need?”

He stared down at her and she refused to look up at him, lips pressed together, eyes steely and firm, as though if she broke her glare she’d cry with the stress of it all. Finally she let out the breath she’d been holding, looking so small, and so young.

“There’s,” she began, voice stuttering, “there’s a letter, I-I left it on the bench, he must have picked it up by accident. He can’t read it,” her eyes shot up to him, watery and pleading, “He can’t, Mr Shimada, he just can’t.” And he knew instantly, knew like a key into a lock or a puzzle piece into place. Ah.

The young woman was in courtship.

And he suddenly understood the problem, understood why it was so important that McCree not know, could never know, not under circumstances such as these.

“Oh, Miss Song,” he found himself murmuring as she stared up at him, so close to tears. He couldn’t count the girlfriends Genji had had when he was her age, always meant to be a secret from him, knowing that Hanzo wouldn’t have been able to approve even if he’d wanted to. And now he was the confidant, the secret keeper, given a kernel of truth in these desperate times, asking for his help, for his assistance, for his silence. He sighed, knowing that it was nothing sensible to be standing beside her, to be so moved by her worry, her wrung hands and fluttering eyelashes.

Thankfully for Hana, he’d recently become a romantic.

“Do you have a hairpin?”

She blinked at him in surprise.

“What?”

“A hairpin, three if you have them,” he smiled at her, as kindly as he could, “good narrow ones.”

“Yeah,” she answered, flustered, “they’re in my room.”

He gestured her away.

“Go on then.”

He would never again be a brother to Genji, he would never again be given the opportunity to be good to him, to care for him, to hide him when he needed hiding, to let him live out his youth undisturbed, believing romance to be the only thing worth crying over. But he could offer what he could to Hana. He could give to her what he had been unable to give to Genji.

The lock clicked open with one final tug and he withdrew the hairpins, Hana’s eyes intent on the back of his ear as he stood and pushed the door open.

“I thought you said you were a bookkeeper,” she said, voice low, almost suspicious.

He looked back as he held the door open for her.

“Let this be a lesson then, Miss Song” he answered, keeping his voice even, “few men consign all their skills to just their profession”

“It is no matter,” she said dismissively as she slipped by him, into the small room they’d uncovered, “you could be a bank robber, but I wouldn’t turn you in, Mr Shimada.” She was close.

He followed her inside.

“For what reason is this room locked anyhow?”

The room was small but filled to its edges, a desk at it’s centre, with an old chair behind it and papers fluttering over every surface. Crates of old wine sat in one corner and crates brandy in the other, a treasure trove of alcohol and documents of every variety, so distant from the well maintained noise of the saloon, nothing here ordered, nothing tidy or clear. The office was a reservoir of chaos, of hidden things, too precious to be thrown away, too dark to be put on display, old photographs, a wanted poster pinned up on the wall, used so often for target practice that the face was unrecognisable, letters written in McCree chicken-scratch handwriting to names he didn't know, boxes with locks and scuffed keepsakes with no explanations.

“It’s always locked,” Hana’s voice came from somewhere outside his reverie, moving through the room with his breath locked in his chest, fingers trailing on the surfaces he passed, “he never lets me in here. Its like he thinks I’m going to go through his stuff or something.”

Beside the window was an old dining chair, like the ones in the parlour but with more signs of age, all scuffed and splintered. On the windowsill was a glass ashtray and a half smoked cigar, an old book, a tin of boot polish resting on a stool, so much evidence of his being here, of a private space he kept only for himself, a kind of refuge.

Draped over the chair was a red serape, gold detailing around the edges, lovingly embroidered with flowers, daisies, a beautiful red, the sort that would have matched him, that could only have been his. And Hanzo found himself reaching for it, like a gravitational pull, for the soft wool so tenderly cared for, a hardy material but clearly beyond its years, no longer worn, just draped over a chair, as though it was a matter of comfort rather than necessity, no purpose left to perform but to offer familiarity, consolation.

And below the serape, in the seat of the chair, sat a revolver.

It was tucked away into a leather holster, bullets lined in their slips, shining quietly in the dull sunlight as though it was still hidden, as though it couldn’t be touched by anyone but him. It was a beautiful weapon, with its smooth wooden handle, polished by years of use to fit only into one palm, its barrel tarnished by age, but cleaned regularly enough that it retained some of its shine, as though it had once been a legacy, with all the hallmarks of heirloom, a kind of weariness to it.

A haunted object, heavy with histories.

Before he could stop himself he found it in his hands, holding it as though it was a kind of holy, the sort of precious that could only come with wretched worship, a tortured god, so weighty in his fingers. His heart raced with the knowledge that he had no right, that rooms were locked for good reasons, that it wasn’t his place to hold such an object, to disturb the silence of this room, this room that McCree kept entirely for himself. McCree had been kind to him, kind to him for months, had never touched his haunted things, never asked hard questions, never looked too closely. It was a betrayal just to be here and he knew it, pawing at the dirt McCree had used to keep unknown things buried. It was a betrayal, but he just couldn’t put it down.

In his ear, Genji began to whisper, voice low and venomous.

“You recognise it,” he purred, “don’t you?”

Behind him Hana exclaimed.

“Oh! I found it, Mr Shimada, I found it,” she squealed in the distance as he gazed down at the gun, feeling as though there was something dangerous here, something looming over him, watching him make this mistake, learn what he wasn’t ready to know.

A half second later Hana rounded him, snatching the six iron from him in a flurry and setting it back down on the chair as though McCree wouldn’t notice that he’d left it holstered and returned to find it loose.

“Come now, Mr Shimada, we gotta go, he could be back at any moment,” she pushed against his shoulder as he bent down to carefully tuck it back into the leather, returning it to exactly how it had been, as though he could take it all back, could take himself back to who he had been before he’d seen it. But even still, he couldn’t help but imagine him here, imagine him late at night, sitting by the window with his boots up on the stool, eyes down, unsmiling and slow. He imagined him with every script dismantled in the silence, broken down until he was empty of showmanship, until he was just himself in the quiet moonlight, eyes half open, polishing his six shooter on his battered dining chair, giving away his ghosts, giving them to a revolver, to keep behind a door of solid oak, to keep hidden.

“Miss Song,” he murmured as he was pushed out the door, “I don’t think I should have gone in there.”

On the opposite wall, Genji gazed back at him.

“No,” he answered, “you shouldn’t have.”

…

The sheriff was sitting at the bar with his shoulders around his ears and a snarl on his face by the time Hanzo slunk down the stairs for the evening, full up on unease and cowardice but in search of familiar company all the same. And he found it. In front of the sheriff and his consolatory whiskey, McCree was wiping down glasses, murmuring words of comfort in that way that he did and smiling all soft, his gaze gentle as the sheriff shifted and sighed and rubbed his eyes, all dramatics.

Hanzo let the feet of his stool drag on the floor as he pulled it out, selfishly, just so that McCree would look towards him, would see him, smile at him, blind him to the curls of darkness that were suddenly around every corner, the encroaching blackness, capable of infesting anything that could be loved. All afternoon he’d meditated on his own doom, his fear of it, quiet and disjointed, hardly raising his head when his name was called, given only scraps, the space where recollections were missing, not sure what it meant, to be suddenly seeing darkness here that he couldn’t explain.

But McCree lit up when he took a seat a few stools down from them and the darkness vanished, watching him toss his rag over his shoulder and wave the conversation with the sheriff to a close, the corners over his mouth curling up and lights in his eyes as he sidled over. 

“Oh, Mr Shimada, I’m glad you’re here,” his exclamation was joyful, rubbing his hands together, as though it had been far longer since they’d last seen each other, since coffee in the morning and drinks the night before, “I have a gift for you.” As he spoke Hanzo watched him reach beneath the bar and pull out a parcel, held carefully and wrapped in linen, small enough to be just about anything. McCree placed it down in front of him almost tenderly, as though the bar was an alter and the book was an offering, as though the harvest was weighed on the spine, the summer on its pages, and Hanzo, a benevolent god, made of silver and McCree, a priest, of gold.

In his chest, his heart began to pound.

Carefully, as careful as McCree had been, he unwrapped it, pulling at the linen until it came away and revealed a book. It was a beautiful edition, bound in cloth with a painted cover, some naturalist compilation, birds in the desert, plants and roads, histories and hills. It was exactly the sort of book destined to end up in some small town, where so few things seemed urgent, where one might feel capable of a bit of amateur study, a lazy afternoon wrapped up in the movement of the desert.

“Oh, Mr McCree,” he murmured, “its lovely,” he up looked at him, to McCree standing with stars in his eyes and hands under his arms, leaning forward on his heels, grinning, “it’s beautiful, thank you.” And he meant it, he meant it in his belly, in his fingers that held it, in his chest and shoulders, as though thanks sat differently when the service was thoughtless, when it was given without payment or fear, just a gift, just a quiet, delicate thing, its presence only meant to please him, to please him just for that sake of his pleasure. He’d never been given anything that asked so little of him, that asked him only to be pleased, to smile, no legacy, no history, no weights on his shoulders. Just a book, just an afternoon’s worth of preoccupation.

“I’m glad you like it,” McCree grinned at him, “Ana was using it as a doorstop,” he spoke as he drew ale from the tap into a tall glass. These days he didn’t even ask for drinks, he stayed still for long enough and one just appeared in front of him, miraculous.

McCree was just about to say something more when they heard a yell from the kitchen and Hana stuck her head around the door with her eyes fierce.

“Jesse,” her voice came out a hiss, “I need your help, get in here.”

“What’s the problem, darlin’?”

“Just get in here.”

Hanzo set his eyes back on the book as McCree retreated to the kitchen, marvelling at it, at this gift, already wrapped up in the thought that it was a symbol, a message, a token of whatever affection McCree could so thoughtless toss his way.

All afternoon he’d been so heavy, almost aching, as though he could still feel the revolver in his hands, still weighing on him, like a curse placed on him for snooping, for going looking where he shouldn’t have. Genji had been in his ear all the while, whispering about hidden things he couldn’t remember, unable to see, not wanting to see. But in the end it meant nothing. In the end he was still too greedy a creature, too desperate to care, so hungry for so much, for gentleness, affection, gifts, for a man who looked at him like that, for a pair of hands that gave and gave, hands that he wanted to badly to grasp him, hold him.

His brain made a noise like a rock being thrown through a window and his train of thought rain into a bricked up tunnel, every muscle freezing, made of stone in a half second flat.

He repeated the thought back to himself with his eyes wide and blank. The impulse had come out of nowhere, holding the book and staring at the kitchen door, heart pounding at the thought. All of a sudden he was overwhelmed by his own imagination, by the thought of McCree’s fingers wrapped around his wrist, fingers trailing against delicate skin, by the way McCree would pull him forwards, breath ghosting over his cheek, close enough he could feel his body heat, close enough to-

Even in his own mind he cut the thought short.

He stamped it down, crushed it into a ball, and forced his eyes to the bar, cheeks hot, breaths shaky and his knuckles white around his gift. _No more of that, no more, that’s enough, stop, god, stop it._

“Well, you certainly have him just about wrapped around your finger, don’t you?”

Hanzo’s gaze shot up, up to where the sheriff, Morrison, was snarling at him from one seat down the bar, eyes narrow and still wearing his star.

Morrison had never spoken to him before, barely even looked at him, but he was always there, always in the background. Hanzo knew that he kept a watchful eye, but never before had he engaged, never before had he let out the snarl that was always in his gaze.

Hanzo found himself sneering back, giving in to the pressure to be bitter, annoyed, making clear that he found only tedium in the accusation, cared little for whatever he was trying to say.

“I am a customer,” he let the barest venom into his voice, “he treats me as such.”

“Oh yeah?” Morrison answered with a snarl, baring their teeth at each other like animals circling in the dark wilderness, “a customer, hmm? And when was the last time you paid for your room, Mr Shimada?”

Hanzo frowned at him but couldn’t answer, furious at his own lack of answers as the sheriff leered down the bar, smelling of liquor, eyes hard and angry, an animal defending a territory with hackles raised, teeth bared, nose crinkled and shoulders taunt.

“You best be careful, Mr Shimada,” Morrison hissed, gaze full of hurricanes and broken glass, projectiles all aimed at him, “We don’t take kindly to liars, and as far as I can tell, you ain’t done nothing but lie since you got here.”

With that, Morrison threw back his whiskey and hauled himself off his stool.

For a moment it seemed as though he might just walk off, might just leave it at that, leave him with his head spinning and heart pounding, empty of haut, of power, words ringing in his ears. But instead he paused, paused and left him with one last warning, eyes narrow, six iron on his hip, star on his breast.

“Step lightly, Mr Shimada,” he said, “I’ve made a lot of promises on that kid, I’ll be damned if I let anything bad happen to him now.”

And as he slipped away, all Hanzo wanted to do was reach for him, grab him, somewhere between wanting to beg him never to tell, offer him anything, and wanting to shove a serving knife into his jugular, silence him the way that he’d been taught men ought to be silenced when they told a Shimada to be careful.

Instead Morrison just left, left with Hanzo's future between his fingers, and a thousand warnings hanging in the air. 

…

Morrison’s words hovered over him like a bad spell all evening.

Genji had lounged in his periphery as he’d let the sense of doom take hold, laughing all through dinner with an evil glint to his eyes, half bloodied and half pristine, staring him down across the table with a grin like a shark, his teeth sharp in his mouth, eyes black and evil.

“Well, looks like he knows,” he’d said, sitting across from him while he’d eaten in silence, “better slit his throat just to be sure, couldn’t hurt.”

“I mean, no one would have to know, McCree wouldn’t ever suspect it was you,” he’d hissed on while he’d sat in the saloon drinking gin, reading his book in one of the booths.

“I mean, fuck, seems likely you’d even have to comfort the poor man while he’s grieving his friend,” Genji had leered on, sprawled across the leather of the other seat, “Pour him a drink, pat his back, tuck his hair behind his ear, just you and him,” he’d leaned across to him as he spoke, a bitter eagerness in his eyes, blood dripping onto the table from his cut lips, “god, what an opportunity.”

At some point he’d snapped, letting it bother him so badly that he went upstairs, specifically to tell him to fuck off.

“Or what, Hanzo?” He’d hissed in his face, “you’ll fucking kill me?”

Hanzo had stomped back down into the saloon, back to McCree and all the people he’d already decided not to kill, no matter how Genji played with him like a cat at the door of a mouse hole, no matter how his stomach churned, no matter how it felt as though he was down to just hours, just hours before his time ran out. No matter how he wanted to do exactly as Genji suggest he do, as he had been taught to do, creeping out of the saloon and making sure that Morrison never spoke of what he knew, that he never spoke of anything. Instead he kept still, kept himself low, kept his eyes on the book, his gift, with its faded colours and soft hues, given to him by McCree, a man who thought him good.

But there was still so much of this that he was unequipped to handle, so many tools he’d never learned how to use, so many defences he hadn’t thought he’d ever need, that would have kept him from melting every time McCree smiled at him, would have kept him from panic at every barely made threat.

But without them, he melted, he burned, and all the dark parts of him whispered that he’d kill whatever or whoever threatened that, one way or another.

Because he’d never felt so warm before.

…

“You enjoying your book, Mr Shimada?”

McCree’s voice echoed down from above and his gaze snapped up, cheek raised from his fist, already on chapter fifteen having not read a word.

McCree smiled down at him, placing the empty glasses from the table onto his tray as Hanzo looked around the saloon. It was empty, completely empty, silent of chatter, of the way it had been. In a blink it was just the two of them, McCree standing by his booth, Hanzo looking up at him, reminded of everything he sought to protect, of the wolf that lay itself as McCree’s feet, just to get warm by his side, make certain that he never came to harm.

“It’s closing time already?”

“That it is,” McCree chuckled and warmth flushed through his belly, “I take it you like the book then.”

McCree always seemed so unaware of his darkness, of the curses that weighed on him, the claws embedded still in his skin of a childhood spent in violence; as though he couldn’t see in his eyes the crimes he’d committed, the cowardice that still howled through his bones. It was as if McCree could see him only for the morning, the porch, the bar, a series of conversations like a roadmap, each leading to each other and back again; as if McCree could see him only for the company that he enjoyed to keep.

And for some reason, Hanzo could only see in him the same.

If he had darkness, Hanzo couldn’t see it, even with the revolver still in his hands, that room he kept only for himself, able to see McCree only by the way he made him feel, only by the relief that coursed through him every time McCree looked at him in that way that he did, smiled at him, made room for him in each moment they shared.

That image flickered through his mind again, flickering that way that bad memories sometimes did, a warning, a summons, a dare. Hands on his skin, knuckles against his throat, a body against his own, capable of such incredible warmth.

And then it was gone and as McCree sauntered away from his booth, he stood. He walked after him in the din of the bar without even thinking of it, always ready to go after him, to seek him out as he worked through the quiet end of a quiet night, McCree stacking the glasses up onto his tray as he moved between the tables.

“Do you enjoy reading, Mr McCree?” He found himself asking.

“Just the paper,” McCree answered, slipping behind the bar as he spoke, setting down his tray, “My mama figured that if I could read her favourite bible passages, there wasn’t much other use to schooling.”

“Thats an interesting philosophy,” Hanzo stood against the bar as McCree cleaned, cheek in his palm, watching with a kind of contentment unfurling blindly in his chest, leaning into the warmth, letting it take him back, letting it wash everything else away; Genji, Morrison, the revolver, the curse, his careless steps. And McCree, beautiful McCree, danced with him when he danced, as though he was pleased he was there, that he hadn’t already started going up to his room. McCree wiped down the bar and swept away the spilled drinks as they spoke, the watermarks that were soon to be, polishing the polished wood as he did every evening, the glasses clinking as he stacked them together and brushed away the crumbs beneath.

“My mama used to say that if you do something long enough, it gets to be a part of you, like miners that can never get the dirt out from under their nails.” McCree pointed at him at him with a rag in his hand, heavy into some half hearted impersonation, “she used to say, boy. Boy, there ain’t no greater virtues than biscuits, whisky, and God, of all the things to be good for, I can only hope you’ll be good for that.”

Hanzo followed him into the kitchen when McCree held the door open for him, carrying his tray of dirty glasses, rag slung over his shoulder.

“And were you?” Hanzo found himself asking, “Good for it?”

McCree let out a chuckle as he set the tray down on the kitchen bench.

“Lord no, I was an extraordinary disappointment to her.”

Hanzo smiled as he walked around the kitchen, his fingers trailing against the soft wood of the kitchen, full of the comforting smell of food, of the oven still warm, watching McCree get on with his chores, happy to be kept company, even by a company as charmless as his.

“If it aids you,” Hanzo answered as he leant back on the bench beside him, “I too am an extraordinary disappointment.”

McCree laughed, and Hanzo, like always, burned.

“Say, Mr Shiamda,” McCree looked down at him as he began to fill the basin with water, “I’m going up into the hills in a couple days, to do some hunting, why don’t you come with me?” McCree smiled down at him, with that warm pleasure in his eyes, that fondness, almost like hunger. “We could make a day of it, it being a Sunday and all.”

And Hanzo couldn’t help the way the answer came to him, the way it sang through his veins, bloomed within him like water overflowing from a glass, of course. Of course. And it made him wonder if Genji had ever felt this, felt this with all of those girlfriends, if Hana felt this with those letters from her young man, of course answered so easily, _of course I’ll come, a day of it, of course, wherever you are, wherever you will be, of course._

“Sure,” he answered instead, voice even, keeping it all quiet, “I would like that.”

McCree grinned down at him.

“Excellent.”

Hanzo all but purred beside him.

…

That night, beneath his ceiling coloured by the dying fire, he dreamt of McCree’s office, he dreamt of the wanted poster, nailed to the wall, its face in tatters. He dreamt of the name printed below, dreamt of a rattlesnake slithering through the desert sands, dreamt of a man with no face, velvet and cut glass. He dreamt of Genji half a decade before, dreamt of him lying by the koi ponds in the morning, a letter sent from correspondents in the west in his hands, his dark hair pushed back, draped in silk and the morning sun.

“Well, would you look at that,” he’d said, “they finally got him, shot in the back by a deputy just south of Silverlake.

“Who?” Hanzo remembered asking. Genji had looked up at him with a grin twinkling in his dark eyes.

“Why, the rattlesnake himself,” he’d drawled. “You remember, don’t you? Joel Morricone, the man who looked the devil in the eye.” Genji voice echoed from somewhere very far away, whispering down into the darkness of his room. “They say he got what he deserved.”

 _Joel Morricone, the rattlesnake himself_.

_They say he got what he deserved._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's raining again, but this time its a good summer rain, and in just over a week I will be going home. 
> 
> I will sleep for five nights in my childhood bedroom, I'll eat all the meals they cooked for me when I was small, telling those same old family jokes, and I'll sink back into it like I was never away because I can't help myself, arms over shoulders, kisses pressed to cheeks. Then, when I leave, because I must, I'll cry. My mum will cry and we will learn anew that I've got to go, that I don't live here anymore, that it was a childhood we shared, a beautiful temporary period, one that binds us but not one that we can carry on the same as before. 
> 
> I always consider steeling myself in advance, but I never do. It's good to cry for it and I do. 
> 
> This weeks lyric is from Anna Tivel's The Question


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jesse McCree, I thought you were dead!” 
> 
> McCree blinked back at her. 
> 
> “Why would I be dead?” 
> 
> Hana stared at him, wide eyed and stricken as though he’d asked her why it rained downwards. 
> 
> “Because,” she hissed, gesturing forcefully at the sky, “its night time, you could have fallen into a ravine or something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late, tremendously late. 
> 
> But in my defence, I've been busy. I have been writing bad essays and then having to spend days coming to terms with how bad they are and how little I care. I figure, men have been writing unfounded, thoughtless trite for centuries and expecting to be celebrated. I can at least write unfounded, thoughtless trite and expect to pass. And soon it will be done, and I can go back to lounging in parks thinking up romantic tomfoolery and reading poetry and writing letters to the lesbians in my life. 
> 
> Nonetheless, please forgive my tardiness, and if you see Mary Oliver, please tell her that I miss her and I'll be reading again soon. 
> 
> Also, if you are an American, good work

_When you are called, darling,_

_Down to the river_

_Don't you just run to get wet?_

“Just to be clear,” Hana followed McCree around the saloon with her hands wrung, anxious like a duckling in unfamiliar waters, and Hanzo watched from the stairs, gazing at them, “you probably won’t be back until the afternoon at the earliest, yes?”

“Well, I don’t know when we’ll be back, darlin’,” McCree heaved a saddle bag on to the bar as he spoke, eyes down on his hands, “depends how good we are at hunting, I guess.”

“But you can’t be that good at hunting, so three at the earliest, right?”

McCree shrugged, clearly not really listening, or else he would have heard the lilting anxiety in her voice, needing specifications, logistics, certainty.

“Sure, sweetness, I can’t expect us back before three.”

Hanzo let the final step creak as he moved down into the saloon and both of their eyes lifted to him.

“Miss Song,” he spoke firmly, kindly, “I’m afraid that three will be far too little time,” he gestured vaguely, “not lest we insist we rob ourselves the necessities of lunch and tea in our haste.”

Realisation dawned in Hana’s eyes. She would think he was just being helpful, just making himself useful as a secret keeper, but he’d been looking forward to his outing with McCree for days now, he wouldn’t have it limited to a few measly hours, not if he could help it.

Beside her, McCree beamed a him.

“Mr Shimada, good morning,” McCree’s voice was as it always was, as though he was pleased by the simplest things, by the fact that Hanzo seemed to have made it through the night, that he still chose to speak, that he’d made it down the stairs and they were once again back looking at each other. And each time it thrilled him, took his breath away to be looked at like that, knowing that McCree saw him with no gems, didn’t worry about where he was from, his inherited graces. McCree’s delight at his existence stemmed only from the fact that it was him, that they were friends, that something, he could hardly think what, made McCree think it was all better off for his having survived till morning.

“So what time do you think you’ll be back, Mr Shimada?” Hana was looking at him with her hands still clasped, but her eyes were hopeful.

He swept through the saloon.

“Oh, not until supper time at least,” he declared. Behind the bar McCree nodded along as he spoke, packing his saddlebag, “it's a long ride from here to the hills, there will need to be stops,” he explained, “picnics,” he elaborated.

“Picnics,” McCree echoed, carefully placing a bottle of scotch in his saddlebag, the glasses wrapped in napkins beside his elbow. He set his hands on his hips as he pondered the concept, scratching at his beard as he thought about picnics and scotch, the semantics of the situation, gears slowly turning, churning out some conclusion while Hanzo watch him from across the saloon. “We’ll need jam,” he said eventually, as though that was the cumulative result of all his thinking.

With that he strode back into the kitchen and Hanzo watched him go with a sense of utter devotion in his chest.

Hana looked towards him, shooting him a tight smile.

He happened to know for a fact that she’d want them out of the inn as soon as possible for as long as possible, giving her as much time as she wanted with the famous letter writer, whom Hanzo knew was visiting today. It was all under the guise of delivering vegetables from the market, just a good lad running errands on a Sunday, god bless him they’d say. And Hana would be waiting for him, already dressed in her laciest gown, wearing the only pair of earrings she owned, a pair of tasteful pearls, probably inherited, shining as she wrung her hands together.

Nervous for her rendezvous, Hanzo could see it.

“I love how you're looking at her,” Genji drawled in the background, “take a look at your own earrings, Hanzo. Rubies, for God’s sake you’re wearing rubies,” Genji skulked around him, hissing like a viper, “Who wears silk on a hunting trip, brother. You might as well ask him to marry you.” Hanzo made the choice to ignore him.

“Miss Song?” he said instead, Hana’s eyes flickering towards him, “If you’d like, I could do your hair for you,” He spoke with a smile, gently, a kind a mourning ever-present in his chest, “Just something simple, I’m aware today is an important day.”

Hana averted her eyes, lips pressed together, but she nodded.

Sometimes he could see her so clearly, see her dressed in her mother’s clothes, her mother’s jewels, her mother’s broach, he could see that she was just an apprentice painter, tracing the lines of well known artworks, learning the curves, the slants, how to move and talk, how keep a boy coming back to her door, be the sort of woman poetry could be written about. He could see in her everything he’d been blind to in Genji, aged seventeen and dressed in Hanzo’s clothes, parading their home around in one of his yukatas, a pair of stolen earrings in his ears, a nice suit here, the odd pair of cufflinks there; Hanzo hadn’t been able to see the learning for the theft, hadn’t understood then that he was still just a kid, growing into himself.

But here, now, looking at her, with remorse always so heavy in him, he wanted to help. He wanted her to know that he understood, that all her clumsiness would be forgiven, she needn’t worry, that given time she too would grow graceful, and in the mean time, he could share his graces.

…

Hanzo pulled a comb through her dark hair, pulling it back from her temples as he stood behind her chair in the kitchen, listening as she rattled on about an embroidery project she was working on, picking at her fingernails while he pulled and pinned and braided. It had been a long time since he’d done someone else’s hair, but his fingers remembered how to make it work, which locks to pull, which to leave, and it was peaceful work, listening to her talk as he took his time thinking over which bits of hair to leave framing her face and the nape of her neck.

And he let the homesickness wash over him like waves, missing Genji, missing home; braiding her hair and waiting for it to pass.

It was strange, but even his grief felt lighter here, in this building, among this company, not as though it had eased, had become any less intense, but that he carried it differently. Here, the weight was less like a boot on his back and more like an infant always in his arms, a burden too, but an easier one. It was all easier here, softer here, as though for months and months he’d been trying to swim upstream, forcing himself against the current, always so tired, always so weary, but here, it was as if he’d washed up against the bank, staring up at the sky in the warm sun, breathing without the taste of river water in his mouth for the first time in so long.

“Alright,” he murmured as he placed the last pin through her hair, “I think I’m done.” She straightened in her chair, hands on her knees as he pulled his mirror from his pocket and held it out in front of her so that she could look at herself, turning her head so that she could see each side. It wasn’t fancy but it framed her face well, and it would be enough, certainly enough for some young man who had never so much as thought about a tasteful up-do once in his life. And he knew full well that the last thing she’d want was to look as though she was trying.

She squealed and in a half second flat she was gone from the chair, darting out onto the back porch making exclamations, waving her hands.

“Jesse, come see what Mr Shimada has done to my hair.”

Hanzo followed her out, coat and hat grabbed from where he’d left them on a chair, knowing that McCree would want to get going and that Hana would want them gone. He stepped out onto the porch into the clear morning sunshine, shivering as he pulled his coat over his shoulders, the winter making its stake on the air, on the half frozen ground, defrosting as the morning expanded into day.

“Oh, well, ain’t you just the spitting image of your ma,” McCree’s voice was clear and bright, trying in his own way to make her feel beautiful, “come here, let me have a look at you.” Hana spun on the porch in front of him as McCree stood below on the grass, a rifle slung over his shoulder, wearing his battered stetson and his Sunday clothes, holding his hands out to her. “You look just lovely, Hana, you really do.”

Hanzo leant on the porch banister to gaze at him while they fussed, standing there in the yard, in a tweed waistcoat, a patterned tie, wearing one of his good cloth shirts for the chill. He rarely saw McCree in anything but the simplest fabrics, he wore cotton and wool, flax occasionally but not often, leather riding boots when he went out, leather oxfords when he didn’t. He dressed only in clothes that he knew would last, hardy and easy to maintain, as though he wasn’t aware that there was seamstress just down the road.

He wore no silks or satins, no velvets or lace, nothing that Hanzo prided himself on, unembroidered and unembellished. And yet, Hanzo would have preferred him in no other clothes but these, dressing as though he thought no more of it than he thought of his own breathing, so unburdened, almost careless. Hanzo gazed at him, leaning his cheek down on his knuckles as he did, something like pleasure in his stomach. In the right light McCree would have been handsome, in all others he was charming, with his long legs and his trim waist, his broad shoulders and sharp jaw, the way he grinned, the way he laughed; he was nice for looking at, nice for being looked at by, even with his crooked nose and lack of jewels. Men like McCree had no need of gems, no need for legacies, reputation weighted on no family history, inherited wealth. He was entirely his own, just himself in the bright winter light.

“Okay, honey, me and Mr Shimada should be going now,” Hanzo watched McCree lean up to kiss her cheek as she stood on the porch, her small hand in his gloved palm, “you’ll be alright without us?” He liked how McCree asked with his eyes clear, asking if she would be alright, tending to the inn and the kitchen and the guests that dwindled with the day, if it wasn’t too much as though Hana didn’t spend most days with her nose stuck in her magazine, little to do and little wanted to do.

“I’ll be fine,” she sang. And Hanzo was certain that the inn and all it would require was quite literally the last thing on her mind.

McCree smiled at her, and for the first time his golden eyes slipped over to where Hanzo was standing, watching as if from afar. And he couldn’t help the way that McCree’s eyes on him made him burn, the way Genji snickered in the background, laughing at him as he all but stretched out under his gaze like a house cat in a patch of sun.

“You ready, Mr Shiamda?”

“Certainly,” he answered, speaking all low and satisfied, looking at him and feeling as though the future, even for such a brief period, would be worth experiencing, was worth looking forward to.

…

McCree had offered him one of his horses for the ride, a mare he called Brandy, a patient and well mannered creature, unbothered by him swinging his leg over her back, forgiving of his unfamiliar hands, letting him tug and jostle her reins with a wonderful indifference. Beside him McCree had mounted the other mare, Gin, and they were on their way.

There was no pretence that either horse was spectacular, had been born exceptional, just born to be horses, to live horses’ lives and be put to work. But they were loved, Hanzo could see that. Loved by McCree, as he loved all else in tow, loved the inn, loved the town, his own clothes, maintaining them, making sure that they were comfortable, well fed, contented. And in return, they seemed to love him back, leaning into his palm when he went to pet them, butting their heads into his shoulders, calm when he pushed bridles over their ears and called them sweet names, given apple slices for their patience.

Hana had waved them off from the porch with a look of relief on her face as they left, off up the trails and gullies, towards the hills where McCree had assured him jackrabbits and cottontails were waiting. They chatted as they rode, trotting along beside each other in the midmorning sun, and it was so lovely. He felt it as the town slipped away into pasture, shaken loose like they were wading out of water, free of all context except that of each other. Riding along beside McCree, laughing as they meandered towards the hills, he was no one and this was nowhere. There were no expectations, no weights, just the sweet song bird chatter of the hills and the nests being made in bushes along the path.

And McCree laughed when he made his dry little comments and he burned and watched him as they rode on up the trail, a pair in the glassy light, and was all that needed to be.

“I wanted to thank you, Mr Shimada,” McCree spoke as Hanzo stirred Brandy to his side, trotting along together up the trail, “For doing Hana’s hair this morning, making her feel special and all,” McCree shot him a quick smile, “I know she’s feeling nervous.” Hanzo startled in an instant, spine straightening, staring at him, at that coy smile he was wearing, the knowing glimmer to his eyes.

“You know about the boy?”

McCree chuckled darkly, grinning, warm in the early winter sun, still careless.

“Oh, yes,” McCree laughed, “I know about the boy.”

Hanzo regarded him out of the corner of his eye.

“And how do you know about the boy?”

“Weren’t that difficult,” McCree shrugged, “Hana’s bright, but she’s not a good liar, kept telling me the letters she was getting were from some cousin from Kansas.” McCree gestured dismissively, as though batting away a fly, “she doesn’t have any cousins from Kansas, her family’s from Korea for Pete’s sake.” Hanzo had to admit that as gambits went, that was clearly not a good one.

“So I asked her ma if Hana had been out of town lately, she said she’d been down to Robertson to visit the library, and I happen to know theres only one eligible lad in Robertson.”

“So you’ve had him killed?”

“Not yet,” McCree winked at him, “I’m in waiting. Ana’s back home as we speak, spying on them, she’ll tell us if this boy is any good and whats he like and so on,” McCree grinned at him, all teeth. “That way I’ll be able to personalise my threats.”

Hanzo couldn’t help but smile at him, chuckling together at the thought of McCree standing on the edge of the porch, threatening some skinny half mongrel with a stick, waving his rag around as though it was a newspaper, banishing the boy from his yard as though he was chasing mice.

“Mr McCree, I suspect you will be a wonderfully cantankerous old man.”

McCree laughed and he could think of no nicer sound.

“God, I hope so.”

They fell into silence, looking out across the plains, the hills and shrub lands, the dusty landscape of dusty yellows and soft greens, of the great expanse of sky above, clear and crisp and so blue, McCree riding just ahead with a smile on his face, one hand on his hip and the other on the reigns. And for just a moment, no part of him seem mismatched. For just a second, on a horse in the wilderness, riding tall in his saddle, no apron, no black slacks, battered stetson on his head, wearing his good leather coat, rifle over his shoulder, his hair just tickling the top of his collar, he was as he was meant to be.

“Mr McCree,” Hanzo found himself speaking, McCree glancing over his shoulder to look at him, “I feel I should apologise. I’m sorry that I did not tell you of Miss Song’s romance when she told me, I have should done and I’m sorry for that.”

McCree laughed.

“Don’t be,” he answered, “I would have thought less of you if you had,” McCree’s voice turned to a murmur as he spoke, warm and low, gazing at him with that look in his eyes, that made-of-silver look, “Its a good and honourable thing to keep a secret when a young woman asks you to, Mr Shimada.”

And then his gaze flickered away again and the feeling was gone.

…

The shot rattled off without a moment’s hesitation and the jackrabbit slumped a half second later, McCree lowering the rifle to observe his own handiwork. And the handiwork was worth observing. 

“You are an excellent shot, Mr McCree.”

McCree smiled at him.

“Why, thank you, Mr Shimada. Your turn,” McCree held the rifle out to him and gingerly, he took it.

It had taken them until afternoon to even begin the hunting portion of their hunting trip, stopping regularly to rest the horses, standing on rocks to drink scotch and smoke cigars, passing bread and cheese back and forth as they’d made their way slowly into the hills. And they’d convinced each other that the stops were necessary, the picnics and breaks, “being the men of leisure that we are,” McCree had explained. “It would be a waste to hurry, what a waste,” Hanzo had concurred as they’d lounged on the saddles they’d pulled from the horses.

And Hanzo was enjoying himself, enjoying himself despite how wrong it felt to do so, such an awful man as him, allowed to enjoy his time, given time in the sun, a partner to ride with, offered peace, haunted by his own shame, the weight of guilt on his spine. But then McCree would smile at him and the darkness would be subside, gone as quickly as it had come, and things would be bright once again.

Being looked at by McCree, for a second it was salvation, for a second he forgot everything else except him and satisfaction swelled in his chest, smiling back. Being looked at by McCree was a reminder of that hunger that he had in him always, always longing to be seen, to be talked to, to be touched, an ache in his belly. And all he could do was monitor his owns hands, make sure his voice stayed even, that there was never too much warmth, never too close, no matter how he longed to brush up against him, to let their fingers touch as the rifle was passed from grip to grip. It would be only a small indulgence, a voice whispered, indifferent to the risk, here or there, nothing that would matter, _he wouldn’t notice,_ it muttered on and on.

But he was a creature familiar with wanting, familiar with hunger, he could ignore it.

So instead he decided to show off and got a cottontail in the eye from three hundred yards.

And when McCree’s hand landed on his shoulder in elation, he refused to flinch, refused to fluster, refused to show how it blinded him to feel a hand against his back, warm and solid and foreign, as though his body had spent so long in isolation it had forgotten the feeling of another body’s impact on his person, the feeling of being touched.

But he never spoke of it, never asked for more no matter how he longed, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, knowing so keenly that McCree had him weak with hardly a gesture, a blink in his general direction, every power dismantled with barely a shrug. And god, it was embarrassing. All he could do was heap sand onto the fire, push it down and bind it tight, certain that he be given no more than he had, that it was a miracle just to have his attention for a moment, just to be smiled at by him, trying to teach himself not to be greedy, not to ask for more.

Instead they just rode along together, and no matter the hunger, it still managed to be good.

They spent the afternoon showing off their shooting skills, watching the birds and small critters scatter, naming the hills, enjoying the good company and a worthy adversary, a healthy competition as they collected their small game, the day beginning to draw to a close around them. They laughed together as they began to make their way back towards the inn, back towards Ana and her secret intel, Hana with her youthful heart, the town that had gone on without them while they’d been riding in the hills, hidden from view.

As they rode home, McCree would wait for him when he fell too far behind, waiting with the sunset behind him on a rocky outcrop, looking as though he’d been painted onto the sky.

“You can see the town!” McCree called out to him as Hanzo neared, waving his hat in the air as though it was a handkerchief and Hanzo was a steam ship, grinning at him as Hanzo roused Brandy into a small trot to join him on the outcrop, come to see what he saw, the horses close enough that their knees brushed.

Below them the hill petered out onto the plain, as though they were in the heel of a great boot-print, dipping down on the pasturelands, dotted with cows and horses, paddocks of sheep lining the dirt road they’d take home. And there, at the centre, well past the foothills, among the fields and barns, was the town, just a smattering of buildings, an anthill of a community, painted by the reds and golds of the dying sun as birds flew southward over head, calling to each other in the wind.

And beside him, McCree chatted, and Hanzo gazed.

In the golden light, he looked so soft and so himself, a man that dressed the way he wanted, and spoke the way he wanted, and smile at him when he wanted. And Hanzo had never adored something cheap before, had taken so long to identify the feeling, to understand that it was pleasure he felt when he looked at McCree, handsome in the right light. He adored the way his hair fell in locks, tucked behind his ears, adored the glimmer of his brown eyes, they way the corners of his mouth curled upwards as he spoke, reaching out to their far away town, waiting for them to come home. There was something about him, there had to be something about him for Hanzo to be so captivated, gazing at him as he explained their route home, unaware that Hanzo wasn’t listening even a little bit, too busy looking at him, baffled by his own endearment, by the flame that flickered in his chest and the hunger that rolled in his belly. All he wanted in the world was to reach out, push his fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, find out if it was soft, if he was soft, wanting so badly every intimacy he was himself denied.

“What are you looking at?”

He’d barely noticed it when McCree had looked back towards him and found him staring, gazing only at him even with the great expanse of space around them, the open hills and distant pastures, still looking only at McCree who was in one of those lights that made him handsome.

Hanzo forced himself to look away, back towards the horizon, to tuck everything silently back into place, shoving his weakness back under the trapdoor of his heart and setting himself like stone, a theatre of impenetrability, knowing that it couldn’t last. McCree might have been handsome, but he wasn’t his, wouldn’t bend to his will, couldn’t be played, so wonderfully apathetic to all the authority he’d been given at birth. There was nothing here he could ask for that would sate him, nothing that could be given.

So instead of explaining, of laying it all out on the grass, he just said “I am looking at nothing, Mr McCree,” and kept his eyes on the distant town, something strange and sad lodged in his throat, a kind of mourning for something that couldn’t be, that wouldn’t thrive.

For a moment there was silence beside him, even though he could feel McCree’s eyes on him. It made him wonder if he’d seen it, had seen him looking and known what he was thinking, smelt the woodsmoke on his breath, heard the rumble of his belly. It made him wonder how long this was going to last, this wonderful period of peace, of companionship, how long he could go making himself out to be benign. It made him wonder if he’d last the winter before McCree put it all together and understood.

Hanzo turned towards him to say something, to try and save himself, some distraction, but when he did there was nowhere for him to look, heart leaping into his throat, McCree so close he didn’t see a face but a cheek, an eyelash, a mouth, leaning across to him, knee pressed into his knee. He wanted to fall over, to fall away, all of it too overwhelming, confused and frightened, but he couldn’t, not before he felt McCree’s hand against jaw, the back of his knuckles just grazing his cheek, not before McCree leant across and kissed him, eyes closed, lips pressed against his, gently, as though bracing for Hanzo to yank away, push from his touch.

Instead, Hanzo kissed him back, every caution tossed aside the instant he understood what was happening. Every worry, every hesitation, every misgiving burned to a crisp in a half second, holding onto him by his waistcoat, kissing him like a starving child snatching the outstretched bread, as though it might be taken back. He was engulfed in flames like a hay bale soaked in lamp oil and set alight, charged with lightening, stomach doing flips as McCree’s hand curled around the back of his neck and pulled him forward, kissed in the dying light.

And all he could do was try to ride it out, every fear overpowered, steered only by the hungry, fanged parts of him, by the parts of him that howled for the contact, howled to be kissed by him, to feel him chuckle against his mouth, hot breath against his lips. Inside of him, quiet and terrible parts of him took hold of his strings, the parts of him that had longed for McCree for as long as he’d know him, all these months, waiting to be kissed by him. He could only reach out and tugged him back when he moved to ease away, pulling him back by his collar, just to keep him exactly where he was, kissing him, mouth against his mouth, his hand against his skin, touched by him in all the ways he yearned to be touched. 

Until Brandy shifted forward beneath him in search of greener grass and he almost yanked himself off her back in a panic. They both startled, McCree’s hand snapping around his wrist as if to steady him, to hold him upright as their eyes locked, and for a moment, everything was still and silent, eyes wide and staring at each other.

Hanzo couldn’t stop looking at him. He liked to look at him on a regular day, but suddenly he couldn’t stop, hunger like a cavern in his belly, fingers twitching to reach out to him, to reach across and kiss him hard and ravenous in the colours of the sunset, breathe embers into his mouth and let him know the heat that roared through him, the wildfire that grew with each day, making kindling of his ribs. Because suddenly, every part of him just seemed so wonderfully attainable, every impossible dream, every hopeless urge brought into sharp focus, brought into the space of the possible.

And suddenly he understood, he had all the answers, at least now, blinded, husky, looking at him with half lidded eyes, knowing exactly what he wanted next.

“Mr McCree,” he said, voice low, looking at him, being looked at by him, and he howled for more, grown only hungrier, more rabid, wilder, not made of silver but made of flames, hungry and burning, looking at McCreee and seeing tinder, opportunity, “what an excellent leap of faith.”

McCree laughed.

…

McCree tied up the horses as Hanzo dismounted from Brandy, listening to him whistling to himself as he did.

It seemed absurd that nothing felt entirely dissimilar than it had that morning, back at the inn, the hills back to being distant, back to feeling as though nothing could go unseen. Tt was the same as it always was; McCree smiling at him, Hanzo learning how to smile back. The only difference was the potential that hummed through him now, feeling as though he could reach across, touch him again, at any moment, that McCree wouldn’t flinch, that he might lean into his hand, let him tuck his hair behind his ear, straighten his collar.

So much of him was still so unfamiliar, so much of him still needing to be mapped, measured, and Hanzo felt like a cartographer in love with his field, so ready to get to work, to let his hands roam and understand him like a landscape, standing there on the street, like a hunger pain in his belly, he wanted to touch him.

But he didn’t, not yet, some quiet voice whispering that there was a long winter ahead, that he had the time, so much beautiful time, to learn his ins and outs, who he was when all was quiet, when he wasn’t dressed up for customers, who he was when he was in that locked room, with and without a revolver, who he was and who he’d been. He wanted it all, wanted whatever shape he came in, certain that he could have been anyone, could have done anything, and Hanzo would still just be standing there, wondering if he was ticklish.

“A good day, Mr Shimada?”

McCree’s eyes flickered towards him with ropes in his hands, with that lopsided grin, his hair in his eyes, having been the one who had made the leap, who had taken all the looks, the side glances, the laughter, the silver and the gold, and had made something of it. He had built on a gamble where Hanzo would never have had the courage, would have held onto the dice for as long as the town would have let him, would have idled for years.

“Oh,” he purred, looking at him with lidded eyes, letting a little bit of that satisfaction into his voice, “I’ve had worse-”

There was an enormous bang as Hana threw both of the saloon doors open in a frenzy and both of them jumped.

“Jesse McCree, I thought you were dead!”

McCree blinked back at her.

“Why would I be dead?”

Hana stared at him, wide eyed and stricken as though he’d asked her why it rained downwards.

“Because,” she hissed, gesturing forcefully at the sky, “its night time, you could have fallen into a ravine or something.”

McCree squinted at her.

“There are no ravines around here.”

“Thats not the point,” Hana crossed her arms, “you could’ve gotten bit by a snake, or kicked by a horse.”

McCree opened his mouth.

And suddenly, Hanzo could see this going on for hours, standing in front the porch in the cold, Hana guarding the door to the the warm and lovely inn like a like a bloodhound on a trail, McCree standing with his horses on the street, refuting her as though every hill was one he was willing to die on, already on the verge of explaining that his horses would never kick anyone, offended that she would suggest as much.

“Miss Song?” Hana glanced at him as though she hadn’t realised he was there, “may we come in please?”

“Oh, Mr Shimada-”

A second voice cut her off, a figure appearing in the doorway behind her.

“You may, Hanzo, dear, but I’m afraid that I require escorting home,” Amari spoke with her trademark hostility, wrapped in a shawl, looking down at McCree standing at the foot of the steps, a steadying hand on each horse as Gin considered nibbling on his hat and Brandy considered chewing through her ropes. “Unfortunately, this responsibility falls to you, Jesse.”

Jesse grinned at her, sweeping off his hat and away from Gin’s teeth and bowing low, almost knocking his head on the post.

“Dr Amari, it would be an absolute delight.”

Amari smiled at him.

“I thought it would.”

…

Hana had loitered with him briefly while they’d waited for McCree to come home in the darkened saloon, wiping down the bar even though it hadn’t been used, as though she’d just needed to use her hands for something, to feel useful in the same way McCree always did, fussing. Her pearls had still been dangling from her ears, her hair still up in its updo, still in her best, laciest gown, but the curtain was long down on whatever performance had taken place, the audience gone, the stage dismantled and put away.

He’d gazed at her, leaning his elbows down on the bar and wondering if her pearls had been as successful as his rubies.

“So,” he’d proposed, “how was your day?”

Immediately, as though he’d turned on a faucet, she’d begun to gush.

“Oh Mr Shimada,” she’d pounced on him, reaching across to grasp his arm as if to keep him rooted in front of her, “Mr Shimada, it was so wonderful, he stayed all day, helped me with my chores and everything! Oh, it was just so nice,” she’d leaned across to him, made of sparks, smiling as though they were conspirators, “he kissed me,” she'd whispered.

“Oh?” He’d answered.

She’d nodded frantically.

“He kissed me, Mr Shimada, said he means to marry me, can you believe it?”

And he’d tried to smile at her, because of course he’d believed it. She was beautiful, she was clever and talented, she laughed easily, she was kindly and charming and wonderful, any young man would have been a fool to have her attention and waste it. But he was as aware as McCree was thatromance and youth was blinding, the decisions made when blind could often go badly, and he hadn’t been able help the apprehension that filled him.

And yet, he’d stayed quiet, let her ramble about the boy, having long learned that there was some excitement that couldn’t be curbed, that could only be waited out, and there would be no harm in it tonight, the lad back in his own town, Hana still safe in the inn, exhausted but satisfied by her own theatre.

McCree had appeared from the back not long after Hana retired and left him be in the saloon. He’d come from the kitchen, having put the horses back in their stables for the night, yawning and empty, no coat, no hat, waistcoat unbuttoned, scratching his stomach as he stepped into the saloon, blinking in surprise when his eyes landed on him, still standing at the bar, still wearing his rubies, his silk, hoping McCree still saw them there, glimmering for him.

“Oh, Mr Shimada,” his voice was soft, as it always was, “you didn’t have to wait up.”

“I wanted to,” he answered as he straightened, “but I’ll be going to bed now.”

“Okay,” McCree answered, moving slowly around the saloon, tucking in chairs as he did, “I’ll see you in the morning, Mr Shimada.”

As he spoke, he leaned in, kissed his cheek, hand just briefly on the small of his back, before he moved away again, stretching his arms above his head and ambling back behind the bar, in search of his favourite ashtray before bed.

“Goodnight, Mr McCree,” he murmured, hand on the banister of the stairs, McCree smiling at him, a trace of tired warmth to his eyes.

“Goodnight, Mr Shimada.”

…

His door clicked closed behind him, and he leaned back against it with a thud, as though for a moment he was too exhausted to even hold his own weight, back in his room, in the sweet darkness. Here, he was only able to think in review, eyes half open, still able to feel McCree’s hand on the small of his spine, kissing his cheek, unable to even flinch, too caught up in the feeling of it, the sort of bliss that had rolled over him, thinking that McCree might find a way to kiss him every evening, that he might go to bed every night with a memory of him on each cheek.

And he was so warm, so warm that it flooded his head and made him giddy, so warm that if felt as though he was burning up with a fever, as though he had a hearth in his belly that wasn’t ever going to go out, as though he had found the campfire after so long looking for it, so long in the cold. He felt so good it was like every chain had all unlocked at once and for the first time in years, he felt light.

And around him Genji skulked, wearing that half mask of velvet and cut glass, the night’s sky over his eyes, McCree’s revolver on his hip, luminescent in his dark room.

“Brother,” his voice was a warning, low and dangerous, “you have no idea how deep the water is here.”

“Oh, Genji,” was all he could answer, “I understand now why you chose to drown so often.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's lyric is less western than it should be, but the image of the river as a kind of indulgence was so beautiful to me, running just to get wet. Its from Ezra Bell's song May the Road, a chronically under appreciated artist. Consider them recommend. 
> 
> Today the air is warm and dry and Adelaide is sinking back into summer with a sigh and the relief is palatable. Last night we got our first good thunderstorm, so loud that it woke me up in the middle of the night. I stood by the window wrapped in my girlfriend's flannel to watch the lightening strike, listening to a sound so loud and so fearsome that it made some ancient part of my brain want to invent a god to appease. What I'm saying is, go stand in the sun for a bit, wear sunscreen if you must, but watch the seasons change, feel connected to this world, to its great and vast structures, feel the movement of the earth.

**Author's Note:**

> The lyric for this chapter comes from Gabriel Kahane's song Union Station and I'm not sure which came first, the lyric or the chapter, but for a long time, that was all there was, these two bits, talking to each other, I guess. I'm glad there are more chapters to come and I kept writing it, even if the market for it is surely just me and the most nostalgic bits of my brain. 
> 
> Anyway.


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